Topic: Practice Exercises

I was wondering what practice exercises you use to work on finger speed?  I have methods using a guitar, and free hand, but was wondering what practices and finger exercises you do to increase your speed?

I am trying to master a new song, but can't build up the right finger speed quite yet.

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Re: Practice Exercises

Good luck to you. I hope if u will have new song that u will record it and post here.

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Re: Practice Exercises

The only way you can increase speed is to practice practice practice.

There really is not easy way - however there are some good and bad ways.

Some people try to learn fast passages by getting the very basics of the  fingering and then repeating it as fast as possible over and over. Now this may work but I have found that generally this will not help.

The way I do it is to start very slowly and get every note perfect and I mean *every* note perfect. Then slowly, day by day, build it up. If you have a metronome to work with then this will help monitor your progress.Just go up one BPM every day and you will get there.

The great thing about doing this is, once you have it up to speed, it will sound perfect which I think is what we all want.

And the lessons that you learn in doing this, quite monotonous task is, the next fast piece that you want to learn you will get there much faster and find it much easier as you are training your fingers, and your brain to play at speed.

Re: Practice Exercises

Excellent suggestion Olly... I'm 100% agree !!!

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Re: Practice Exercises

well i think the hardest in practicing our fingers speed is our brain speed. cause ven though our fingers are fast but our brain will not be able to be fast enough to know which or how to play next. but that is my problem personally.

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Re: Practice Exercises

Practice your alternate picking... I improve my speed practice alternate picking....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMEKFPWn1GI

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Re: Practice Exercises

Well I do keep it rather simple and I have succeeded in improving my skills likewise. I ensure each day I practice specific things like finger exercises, scales & arpeggios and chord playing. During the rest of the day whenever I get some time I play the songs of my liking. On doing this for a week I can realize myself I have made good progress. Once I am satisfied I move towards practicing other things. This has been the way for me for the past six months and I am happy with my results. Am also thinking of some lead guitar lessons know any good place for that?

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Re: Practice Exercises

Find a very good teacher who know a lot about technique. He will save you years of trial and error.