Do you ever feel like you aren’t able to build your guitar speed very well? Do you feel like even though you try harder and harder, you find yourself making the same mistakes over and over?
Many guitar players who want to build speed go about doing it the wrong way – they just try to go faster and faster, hoping that at some point the mistakes will go away and they will eventually be fast.
That is the difficult, inefficient way to build speed.
Here’s a simple strategy that is much easier and will produce results if followed carefully:
1. Pick a short phrase or passage you want to play fast
2. Using a metronome, find the fastest speed that you can play it at cleanly.
3. Gradually increase the speed and carefully observe what mistakes begin to appear.
4. Slow down the metronome and isolate the places where mistakes were happening so you can specifically target them.
5. Gradually increase the speed and repeat the process.
As you do this, the mistakes will disappear and your overall speed will increase. This much more effective than the “try really hard” method.
