3 Speed Exercises to Learn to Play Guitar Faster

Learn to play guitar faster

Learning to play faster is something intermediate and beginner guitar players often want to achieve, although sometimes they put the cart before the horse. You see playing quicker is a mix of playing accurately and also playing faster. I’ve found that when I try to go too quickly before I’ve mastered a particular riff, scale or chord progression slowly leads me to play it very sloppy when I speed up.

In this article I’m going to cover three tips you can use to play faster. These exercises will be described in terms of scales.

Practicing Scales Up and Down the Neck

Don’t worry if you don’t know every scale on the guitar. I would suggest that you start off learning the first pentatonic scale shape as it’s the easiest. If you’re currently using a guitar lessons dvd or some other form of self study program you can refer ahead in the lessons to where scales are introduced. Don’t get hung up on memorizing them just learn the first shape of the pentatonic scales that will do for now.

Start at the first fret on the 6th string and play that shape, now do it backwards. Now move up to the 2nd fret and do it again and then the 3rd, 4th and 5th frets. Get the idea… You want to go all the way up the neck and then all the way back down. Focus on accuracy here not speed at first we’ll add speed to it in the next exercise.

Metronome and Speed Increases

So you’ve mastered the skill of going up and down the neck playing the first pentatonic shape in forwards and reverse. What I want you to do now is grab your metronome (if you don’t have one I suggest you get one, there are some free software applications you can use as well) and find a number of beast per minute you feel comfortable at. It may be 60-70 or less.

Set the metronome to that speed and at the first fret play the scale up and downwards again. Now move to the second fret but this time increase the metronome speed by one or two beats per minute. Do this all the way up the neck and by the time you get to the end of the neck you’ll be playing at a faster pace then you were when you started. Pending you don’t start too quickly outside your comfort speed you should also hold your accuracy of hitting the notes.

Work this every couple of days and strive to increase your starting speed as you get better.

Double Picking

This is a secret that is known by most guitar players how ever they don’t all take advantage of it. Picking up and down doubles how many times you can pluck the string versus just hitting it with you pick or finger on the way down. Guitar players which play very quickly have mastered this skill.

It’s not the easiest thing and can feel uncomfortable at first so I suggest to get used to it just start on the 1st E string playing up and down. Get used to the feeling of double picking. Next try playing the pentatonic shape this way hitting the string on the way down for the first note on the 6th string then pick up for the second note. Follow this pattern all the way down the scale. Once you feel more comfortable with this and match up how quickly your fretting hand can move and unison with your picking hand things will start speeding up in leaps and bounds.

So there you have it, some speed exercises to improve how quickly you play. These are primarily for playing scales and lead guitar, but some of the concepts also go hand in hand with rhythm, although few rhythm guitar players are wanting to be able to switch chords at lightening speed.

Remember to start slow and add speed, that should be the beginner guitar players mantra. You want to be quick and accurate not just quick and sloppy.

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