If you want to become a better guitar player than you surely have to work hard but you can also take help of these tips to play guitar faster:
Tips to Play Guitar Faster
Sync Your Picking & Fret Hands
There is a myth that to play fast you need a perfect fret technique. They think that if you have a strong fret hand, then you will play fast & because of this many players solely focuses on improving their fretting techniques. They forget about their picking hand but to play fast you would need to have both your hands working well & strong in order to play fast.
Is your one hand weaker? Try playing with it more often with your weaker hand & bring it to the speed of your stronger hand. You have to make sure that both your hands work together.
Try Alternate Picking
This is most used by the guitar players to play fast as it allows the player to play without so much of effort. In this technique, you will pick a note with down stroke & the other note with the upstroke in a continuous way. If you will go by this technique, then you would be able almost to double the number of notes you can play in same time when were you used to play to only some notes at a time & that too at slow speed but with the help of this technique you will play fast without any errors. This technique would improve your arm fatigue & speed.
Try Sweep Picking
The technique demands both the hands to work together in a sync to get the desired outcome. Sweeping is playing arpeggios (when notes are picked continuously in quick succession instead of one by one) both descending & ascending which makes the notes sound separate. You don’t have to pick individual pick for every single note but you have to glide your fingers on the strings & it is same as strumming the strings. Sweep picking is not easy because it requires perfect coordination of both your hands. Your pick &fret fingers should come in contact with the string while touching the right spot will provide you fast speed.
Try Economy Picking
Economy Picking is also considered a major factory to pick up speed. This technique will take your guitar speed to the next level. It is a mix of sweep & alternate picking. The technique requires alternate picking method when you will change strings. This case makes the player to use sweep picking, which means picking a note in the direction of you are playing. You would have to use an upstroke if you are going to a lower string & a down stroke if going to a higher string.
Integrate Techniques
When the guitarists are looking to increase their speed, then they only look for only one way to increase their speed which is not suitable at all. An ideal technique would be to practice sweep picking for 15 minutes, then some duration of two hand techniques, then legato so the player should mix techniques to maximize results.
Loosen Up
To be a pro guitar player you need to enhance the speed of playing with strings. Increasing the speed of playing guitar will make your fingers float easily on the strings, but for that, you have to keep in mind some few pointers. First of them is to avoid tension, i.e., loosen up a bit because when your mind gets tensed your finger gets tensed to which makes it impossible to stay steady on the strings of the guitar which in turn reduces the speed. So try and avoid any tension while you are playing guitar. Any stress muscles on arm, shoulders, wrists and back eventually will affect your practice. Therefore keep a habit of stretching your muscles once in a while.
Practice Daily
Another significant pointer is to practice regularly, without a good amount of practice you can’t expect yourself to be a master of something. But other than the amount you also have to focus on the techniques you are using, i.e. to focus on both quantity as well as quality. Yu have to sacrifice your plenty nights of sleep, even years till you finally be able to master this artistic skill. All you need to do is to focus on your speed and techniques. Practice regularly for best results.
Practice Slowly
To go fast, you definitely have to go slow first. In other words, work your fingers to play the guitar slowly which after some time you gradually will reach up the fast speed of playing the guitar. This is one of the most significant pointers one needs to keep in mind before he thinks to be a speedy guitar player. This slow going process is a perfect time to work on your hand postures and movement, focus on notes you are playing to pick on your guitar.
Practice Fast
After practicing you can work your way up on playing fast. Don’t be afraid of going as fast as you can because until you try you won’t know that how much you need to practice and what are the more things that you need to improve. You’ll also feel about confident that how in so little time you had improved in so many ways.
Try a Metronome
The last but not the least thing you need to note down is to work on your metronome. A regular guitar player is familiar with this term on the other hand for those of you who don’t know; a metronome is used for maintaining a steady tempo or a beat of their musical instrument. Now the question arises that how one can make use of the metronome feature so that he could gain his speed of playing the guitar. To learn a guitar at the comfort of your home, you could simply download a metronome app which you can also find online, some of the best ones are ‘Best metronome,’ ‘Metronome online’ and ‘Gieson.’ With these apps help you can learn to play a guitar faster with accurate metronomes. You can also try playing at high-speed metronomes just to check your efficiency.
