Tips for developing speed with repeated licks

Playing Technique
#1

It’s easier for me to generate speed running up an down a scale as opposed to ripping through a repetitious lick over and over, and I’m curious if anyone has any insight in how to generate that speed.

One thing I noticed Troy, and others mention, is to focus on one of the notes more than the others, kind of like the lamp in the backdrop of a scene where Fred Flintstone is running in his house, a landmark of sorts. This is supposed to help the other fingers fall into place.

While I am attempting to develop this, I’d like to know if others have any ideas for developing speed like this. Any vids or links would be appreciated.

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#2

Repeating licks and focusing on a particular note sounds like chunking - building small parts in isolation to use with other chunks to play longer lines and is great for focusing on specific mechanics that require work until they are ‘easy’/natural. The loopable licks also allow you to work on stamina.

I suppose the question is do you need to generate speed with repetitious licks? If you are getting speed and accuracy from runs that you would actually use musically, just stick with that. The only tip that I can think of is to phase shift the lick (practice starting on each note of the lick) and start on both up and downstrokes. Practicing this way may isolate the reason why you are struggling to generate speed (it might be one note giving you grief).

I am actually the opposite to you- running up a scale from E to E is quite a challenge for me, especially the initial few notes - For example, i can tremolo pick a note and then blaze into the lick, yet my picking hand couldn’t play the same lick from a ‘cold start’. It has improved after a lot of work…

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#3

The best way to practice you’re speed picking is to start by playing you’re favorite guitar licks, it doesn’t half to be a specific solo, just play what ever notes or scales you enjoy playing. And just take you’re time and if you start to feel pain in you’re hands, just take a minute and exercise you’re hands, and wrists.

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#4

What is the concrete problem that you experience with repetitive licks?

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#5

I just don’t seem to be able to generate as much speed as I’ve been able to with ascending or descending scales. It’s clunky, and slow.

It is likely a combination of things which hinder my speed. It may be my picking, and I’ve just gone through the pick-slanting primer and I am now practicing down/up/rotate sequence in there and I can see how efficient this is compared to my typical haphazard approach. I am already beginning to speed up with this as I burn it into my motor-skills.

But, there is no doubt my left hand is not as fast as I’d like it to be. I think I need to apply some fast motions to my left hand work in order to find out what’s naturally fast because I have traditionally started with chunks slowly and attempting to work them up to fast speeds. This has been ineffective.

I may need to deal with some slop in order to get my fingers flying fast and then refine it, sort of like people suggest for tremolo picking. I won’t be able to play fast if I don’t play fast.

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#6

This is basically a form of chunking. Instead of just trying to “play fast” and hope for the best, you’re now basically playing a repeating sequence of hand movements. Personally I tend to accent the first note of groups like this and you can see it in many of our slow motion examples. It has been pointed out to me a number of times that the first pickstroke on a lot these phrases is actually visibly bigger than the others, even on single string lines.

I also find this helps gauge tempo. If you listen for the unit, and not the individual notes, it’s a lot easier to hear when you’re speeding up or slowing down. If I do an unmeasured tremolo, I have no idea how fast I’m playing unless I film it and count the notes. And many times it’s not at all what I think it is. But if I’m playing repeating units, I know exactly what speed I’m going at all times. I think this is why some players who only ever did tremolo work for speed have not-so-great hand synchronization. For me it was the opposite - I never worked on tremolo and only ever did synchronized / chunked type practice.

Are chunking accents a bug or a feature? I don’t know! I used to think it would be a negative to have unnecessary accents in your playing. But I think in actual practice you can dial them back so that they are not overwhelming your dynamics. And if it helps you get lined up to begin with, maybe it’s worth it.

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#7

I have the opposite problem. I’m good at chunking and not so much at linking chunks together. On accenting notes, I think it’s important to know where the one is and accent it, whether you are subdividing in 3 or 4, or other numbers. Without a strong beat on one runs sound ambiguous imo. It makes things much harder for me to do this as I practiced for years without subdividing. Teemu mentions this in his interview. Something about playing 4’s on 3 note per string patterns feels harder.

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#8

Hello,Troy,this is a. J. Every time i try to work on my picking speed,i end up playing hammer ons,and pull offs. Even if i pick the notes,or scales and some arpeggios,i play. Would you recommend i practice my picking speed? With my drum machine? Or a loop station?thank you.Or record my guitar playing? And listen to what I’ve played?

#9

For the left hand fast is not always the best thing to do.
For the left hand mostly the problem is finger independency and strength when moving them independently.
Both can be trained pretty good when using slow or moderate tempos.

The problem on fast motions is that you tend to roll the wrist, which trains the fingers less if at all. That works fine for goin up and down monotonely, but makes it hard to get out of that.
I did that rolling motion for years, and it’s a pain in the a** to get rid of it … still bothers me.

I’d remommend to start with finger indepency exercises and don’t be discouraged on first try, pinky and ringfinger are damned bastards for everybody in the beginning. :grin:

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#10

Hi from France ! Troy, I am one of the guys that pointed out tiny physical accents in your playing. You said several times that you don’t know how fast you play when you are tremolo picking, so my guess is that you have never done any right hand isolation work trying to accent certain notes. As for me I tried it all, with and without accents, also trying to figure out how to properly pick DWPS style, and as soon as I was trying to speed up a bit, It was really hard maintaining a steady pace with both hands synchronised. Then after many attempts and because I find it easier to play runs on several strings I started to play the six notes pattern first alternating between high E and B strings every six notes, so I can emphasize accented notes in a more natural way. This also helped a lot with DWPS, as I am constantly escaping from a string to another so I’m killing two birds with one stone I think. Then I started to “trick” myself by doing one six notes pattern then switching to a new string and playing the pattern twice on that string, with the right accents. This way it seems that I can use some sort of “momentum” to educate my right hand. Given that Troy said that he has made his first real progress playing the pop tart lick, I assume that perhaps he practiced physical accents by switching strings and later had enough skills to reproduce these moves on one string. This would explain why it’s so hard for most of us to practice accents on one string first instead of switching strings: when you switch strings you have no choice but to perform a physical accent, like a momentum. But when you stay on one string, things are more conceptual/abstract hence the chunking theory, which is harder to master, in my opinion. Just some insights here, and still working on it, but I’d like to have Troy’s thoughts about this. Hope my english is understandable. Regards

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