Guitarists: What do you do to increase speed & dexterity?

[choldy]

The non-musical approach opened up a whole new world to me. I felt as if my playing had become boring and repetetive, which was strange because technically I feel like I'm a reasonably accomplished player, and practiced a lot of scales etc. It wasn't until I read a guitar mag with Zakk Wylde's boot camp article that I realised why. I now regularly do non-musical type runs like the ones above for warming up and warming down, and it's improved my speed heaps but also made my playing a bit more interesting.

 

[darknailblue]

An excellent technique and musical theory website thats devoted to SHRED guitar playing is www.ibreathemusic.com Another one that is okay, but has a lot of monthly columns is www.insaneguitar.com iBreatheMusic has a fourm thats dedicated to guitar technique, songwriting, gear and everything else guitar. The best thing to do though, and everyone says it, and everyone is right, is to play technical exercises with a metronome. My personal favorite even more than those god awful 1234 permutations is to play scalar sequences. Thats how fast guitar players like petrucci, vai, satch, malmsteen, gilbert and dimeola usually developed their speed, and is a trademark of their fast playing. Record your daily progress and then take it up a notch when your TECHNIQUE is prefect. There is a difference between your mental endurance (how fast you can think), and your technique (how fast and accurate your finger move). Your mental endurace will usually increase before your technique does, so be careful not to rush it and develop sloppy technique. Concentrate on memorizing the exercise first, and then concentrate on how your fingers should move. Good luck.


~darknail

 

[jfrog]

The best thing to do though, and everyone says it, and everyone is right, is to play technical exercises with a metronome.

There's that nasty word again...METRONOME!!

Next thing you'll tell me is that I need to floss my teeth! and exercise!!



I have started to do scales & such along w/ my metronome (really a drum machine) It really puts a glaring spotlight on my timing problems. Either that, or the drum machine keeps changing tempo.

 

[darknailblue]

It's important though!! Playing with a drum machine is better though. When I do recording and I play to a click track I usually notice that when I put the drums to it I'm slightly off. When I paly to a drum track - because of the fact that theres more going on - I play WAAAAAAAAAY more accurately. Unfortunately theres no magic way to get faster, just like theres no magic way to look like arnold swatchenegger... woah.... but anyway, practice, practice, practice.

~darknail