If you’re looking for a free metronome to use on your PC, you might want to try Weird Metronome. It’s tiny, eminently configurable, and FREE.

I’ve been using it on my PC for a couple of weeks now, and the only feature this metronome is lacking is keyboard shortcuts for adjusting the tempo. However, the author makes the source code available, so if you’re good at C++ you could try adding this feature (and get my eternal gratitude).

Advantages of a PC-based metronome
I love my little Korg metronome, but sometimes it’s nice to be able to practice without worrying about annoying others with the click, click, click. My Korg does have a headphone jack, but I’m too lazy to route the signal into my mixer so I can hear both the metronome and my guitar.

If you play your guitar through your PC, then using Weird Metronome makes it easy to get a good guitar-metronome headphone mix.

[UPDATE 2 September 2007: Some users may experience timing issues with Weird Metronome (I've not noticed this problem, but maybe my timing just sucks! Another free alternative that seems really great is Zetronome, which was pointed out by Mamadalica in comments. It can be controlled with keyboard shortcuts, is highly configurable, and uses real drum sounds. Oh, and for your speed demons, it goes up to 300 bpm. My spontaneous impression is that it kicks Weird Metronome's butt.

A non-free alternative is Beatcraft (thanks to Seb for the tip).

Blogging is cool. Not only do I get to share things that I discover, but I learn a lot from you alert readers as well! ]

Steve is an amazingly skilled all-round player, but it’s his terrifying stellar tapping technique that he’s most feared well known for. (Check out the solo Hammerhead, for example.)

Not being one to turn his back on the audience to hide his ninja tapping secrets, Steve has freely shared his “secrets” in a variety of instructional materials, including video, books, and columns for various prestigious guitar magazines. You can purchase the excellent video The Two-Handed Guitarist as well as Steve’s other instructional books and CDs in his online shop. [No, these are not affiliate links -- I've seen Steve's video and can heartily recommend it to aspiring tappers.]

Interview

1) How do you keep the strings quiet for multi-fingered tapping when you don’t/can’t use a damper unit (or sock!)?
I use the side of the palm of my right hand to mute the lower strings wherever I may be tapping on the neck; it takes a while to get the angle down.

2) What do you know about tapping technique now that you wish you’d known when you first started?
All of the different scale positions and intervals that can be combined for a unique effect.

3) Is there anything else you’d like to add, rant about, or promote?
The most important thing to remember when creating a solo with tapping is to record the rhythm part you will be soloing over first. This way you can experiment with different ideas to find which work the best. Always create from the heart and others will share the experience.

Recent photo of Steve in his studio. (Cool, we have the same keyboard stand!)

So there you have it: more qualified advice from someone who definitely knows their stuff. Now I’m off to try putting Steve’s advice into practice.

Hi,

I recently read your speed experiment post and decided to try it. I have to
say the results are astounding! I have tried a number of different ways of
practicing, and this method really makes the material become second nature.

It let me achieve a sort of “mindless” playing, where I don’t have to think/worry about the fingers getting it right as it’s so well glued. Being able to play tricky things without having to really think about them was something I’ve been trying to achieve since reading Kenny Werner’s “Effortless Mastery” (definitely worth a read).

Thanks so much for this, it’s really made a difference to my
playing.

AC

[LL: my emphasis]

AC, I’m glad you got some value from the article. And thanks for the tip about Effortless Mastery — I’ve just ordered it. Looks like a great read!

Dear readers, if you’ve not given the “play slow” method a try, perhaps AC’s success will convince you that it’s worth a shot.

(Too bad I don’t have a “secrets to playing fast” product to sell, because AC’s email would make a killer testimonial to use in direct marketing! )

Make the Shredtracker guitar practice motivator your new home page. You’ll either get the kick in the butt you need or collapse under the guilt of seeing how much time you waste dorking around.

Major credit goes to Mark Taw for his awesome Getting Back to Work motivator, the script for which I mangled and bent to my will. Found via the ever-so-inspiring 43-folders.

How contradictory advice messes with your head

If there’s one thing guaranteed to make you feel insecure about your guitar playing, it’s being confronted with wildly contradictory advice from killer guitar players whom you respect and and admire. Nowhere is this contradiction more striking than in the baffling variety of “Guitar Practice Secrets of the Stars” featured in contemporary performance-oriented guitar magazines. The vast discrepancy between the various approaches may be interesting to consider, but it also helps keep guitarists in a constant state of insecurity, thinking that “a better way” is lurking just out of reach. So they keep buying mags to find the secret path to guitar excellence — which I doubt the guitar mags are complaining about!

When it comes to putting in practice hours, you can roughly categorize the guitar gods into to three main schools of thought. Allow me to illustrate:

How much to practice? Three schools of thought

Low maintenance: In the low-maintenance, go-with-the-flow school you have Yngwie Malmsteen, who has repeatedly gone on record stating that he never practices. This immediately raises the question, “Well then, WTF counts as practice?” We can basically throw out the idea that “never practicing” is not an effective way to continually improve your guitar skills. All guitarists of any notable skill — including Mr. Malmsteen — have certainly spent some time engaging in activities that can reasonably be considered “practice.”

High maintenance: In the high-maintenance, play-till-your-fingers-bleed (and then some) school, you have Steve Vai, who recommends that players who are “intensely driven…to accomplish brilliant and historical acts on the instrument by discovering their unique abilities and talents” practice 10 hours a day (Guitar World, April 2004).

Advocates of grueling practice routines love to use words like dedication, intensity, drive, virtuosity, etc. The subtext is that if you aspire to be truly great, you must put in ungodly amounts of hours on your instrument — therein lies the dedication of the “true artists,” which separates them from the unwashed masses of wannabes who “don’t have what it takes.” Fair enough.

Sensible moderation: Steve Lukather, whom many (with good reason!) consider a true “guitarists’ guitarist,” advocates what I’d call the sensible, moderation-in-all-things school. He recounts striving to practice regularly about two hours a day, saying (in effect) that anyone who claims to practice a ridiculous amount of hours a day is either:

1. full of crap,
2. wasting time, or at worst
3. on the express train to burnout central, with stops in tendinitis city.

This sensible approach seems most likely to lead to success and continual progress for most guitarists. I have serious reservations about putting in extended hours of focused practice à la Steve Vai’s 30-hour guitar workout. Even truly stunning classical virtuosos (Itzhak Perlman, anyone?) don’t buy into the idea of marathon practice sessions. The key is regular, quality practice, not mere quantity. You’re not going to make much progress if practicing becomes a tedious chore — or if you have given yourself tendinitis.

Making sense of the senseless

With role models espousing such widely contradictory approaches, it’s no wonder that many guitarists spend so much time second-guessing themselves and searching for the perfect practice routine that will make the clouds part, angels sing, and provide a religious experience of instant guitar-skills gratification.

There is no perfect routine
Constantly judging yourself by what guitar heroes X, Y and Z do is the path to discouragement and despair. Rather than perpetually chasing someone else’s secrets, doesn’t it seem more fruitful to spend an hour or so defining your own personal goals as a guitarist, then devising your own “Secrets to effective practice” routine? Creating your own best routine can hardly be rocket science; you probably can’t go wrong with a routine that

• fits easily into your schedule (so you’ll actually do it),
• feels rewarding and enjoyable (so you’ll KEEP doing it),
• leads to steady, gradual progress in line with you outlined goals, and
• can be easily revised to adapt to your growth and development as a guitarist.

Next time you open a guitar mag, remember that they are profit-oriented just like any other commercial venture, and that their primary goal is to sell you more issues. Keeping you feeling insecure about yourself while at the same time offering you a (temporary) solution is a great way to keep you coming back from month to month. Guitar mags provide lots of useful information, particularly for beginning and intermediate players, but it’s a good idea to use your critical thinking skills when evaluating the practice routines that they present. (And of course, do the same with the anything I tell you!)

Finally, don’t worry about how much somebody else practices, or how long they’ve been playing, or any of the other things that boil down to comparing your own level of achievement to theirs to see how you measure up. Learning to evaluate yourself by your own standards rather than those embodied by other players or dictated by so-called experts could be a massively liberating experience for you. It sure has been for me!

GP: What do you tell fans when they ask you for advice?

MF: I tell them to stop practicing and start playing music. Play with your band, your buddies, and any other instrument you can. Play in the studio, play live – play all the time. The weakness is getting too hung up on technique. The strength is being able to play along with other musicians. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. In fact, make even more mistakes. When you do something cool, take note. And don’t do anything in the nature of practicing a technique.

GP: But aren’t you considered a technical player?

MF: Yes, but only if “technical” means that I have my own style – not that I’ve mastered “book” techniques. I can sit in with any musician in the world and nail something with them, because I’ve been playing music for so long. But if someone were to ask me to play the Mixolydian mode at a metronome setting of 200, I probably couldn’t. I never had the interest in doing such a thing, and, for the record, I dislike difficult-sounding guitar music. You’re not going to wind up in the studio with Paul McCartney one day, and hear him say, “Alright mate, can you play some of those arpeggios a little faster?” There’s no reason to get stuck on stuff that won’t have any real-world application. I’d even go as far as to say that if any technique has a name on it – like “string skipping” – beware! You can do wonderful sweep picking in your bedroom, but if you play it inside a song, you can’t follow changes, and it’s absolutely useless. Learn to master rhythm. Rhythm guitar builds songs – not technical acrobatics. [My italics -- LL]

Okay, so…screw technique — just jam, dude, and everything will magically sort itself out.

Huh?

Perhaps he’s been “creatively (mis)quoted” in the article, but in reading this my first reaction is, “WTF?”

Okay, if you’ve already put in years of practice so that you can effortlessly play anything you want, perhaps you’ll do fine by just jamming and playing rhythm. But given that few guitarists approach regular technical practice with anything like boundless enthusiasm, I hope beginning and intermediate guitarists won’t take Marty’s anti-technique advice as a good excuse to NEVER practice technique. That would just be dumb.

You have to remember that Marty is speaking from the perspective of an accomplished artist with years of high-intensity experience under his guitar strap. I can guarantee that if you’d been a Dorito crumb on the floor of Marty’s bedroom back before the Cacophony days, you would have seen him practicing at least SOME technique. I’ll bet he even had names for them. But with his many years of experience perhaps he’s come to realize that, while practicing technique is important for musical development, many guitarists totally neglect to develop other important aspects of musicianship. Now that is a view that I can support!

Technical facility plays a huge role in enabling you reach your ultimate level of artistic expression on your instrument. And it doesn’t come easy: current research on human learning and mastery suggests that it takes an average of 10 000 hours of practice (over approximately 10 years) to master ANY difficult skill — from Chess to Violin — even for so-called prodigies. Even Mozart, the quintessential prodigy, didn’t produce anything noteworthy until after about 10 years of practice. That’s right — if you want to be really freaking awesome at something, be prepared to devote 10 000 hours to developing your skill. So until you’ve reached the technical nirvana of effortlessly being able to play whatever the heck you want, I don’t see any solid reason not to make regular technical practice part of your routine.

I speak from bitter experience. Until just recently, I’d never practiced technique in any systematic way, always having been far more interested in “practicing” by improvising melodies — trying to play the things I hear in my head. But having seen how much just a couple of weeks of focused practice has helped my playing, I am kicking myself in my metal butt for not starting sooner. And honestly, my current interest in practicing technique is not driven by some banal “Duuuude, I just wanna play fast” mentality. I don’t even like “shred guitar” music; I’d much rather hear a player like David Gilmour, Gary Moore or Michael Schenker play a heart-rending melody or bend a note expressively. Any day, no freaking contest. But my recent foray into technical practice is making it easier to get what I hear in my head to come out of the guitar. Mirabile f’n dictu! I’ve always been frustrated by the wonderful sounds I can hear in my head but don’t have the skills to play. But now, while I doubt I’ll ever really reach the state of effortlessly playing anything I can imagine, it’s a real kick to realize that something as simple and easy to do as technical practice can yield such welcome results.

If you ignore the lame advice about technical practice being baaaad, Marty does offer some excellent points. There are so many guitarists who focus on technique (i.e., playing fast and clean, widdle widdle widdle widdle) to the degree that they don’t have much else to offer — unless you happen to like “difficult-sounding guitar music.” And I suppose that to that I just have to say, “fair enough!”

Blank guitar tabs – A4

Grey tab lines	Black tab lines

Blank guitar tabs – Letter

Grey tab lines	Black tab lines

One theme that runs through much of what I’ve been reading is the importance of metacognition (basically, thinking about thinking) and visualization for attaining peak musical performance. So when I embarked on my slow practice experiment, I paid close attention to my thoughts and feelings to see what I could learn. Here are some of my observations about the mental challenges of slow practice.

Impatience
It’s easy to get impatient and be tempted to increase speed too quickly. Sticking to my strict program of one minute’s perfection, one click at a time took heroic effort. Knowing that it paid off, however, should make it easier next time.

Negativity
There is much research indicating that directing negative thoughts towards ourselves is a great way to commit self-sabotage, and that we can gain much from engaging in positive self-talk and visualization. This may sound a bit too new-agey and wishy-washy for some, but research has shown that our thoughts and mindset can make a huge difference in how we approach tasks and whether or not we succeed.

It’s easy to lapse into negative thinking when practicing slowly, e.g., “I’m only playing at 80 bpm — I’ll NEVER reach 180!” I had to repeatedly turn my thoughts in a positive direction, imagining what it would be like when I could play faster, telling myself that it was possible with practice and that perseverance and patience were the only way to get there. It made a huge difference, and was a big part of why I was able to fight off the temptation to try to increase speed too soon.

Concentration and breaks
One of the main benefits of slow practice is that you can concentrate hard on various micro-aspects of your technique. But it can be tough to maintain concentration during an extended practice session. Apparently, classical musicians often take frequent short breaks during their extended practice sessions. I tried this approach, and found that taking a 5–10 minute break when my concentration was flagging was really helpful.

The importance of privacy
One of my greatest mental barriers to getting quality practice is my fear of annoying others with my endless repetition of scales, arpeggios and other technical exercises. I have found that the ONLY way for me to do any extended practice is to ensure that I have complete privacy so that nobody will hear me. Even if the others in my surroundings repeatedly assure me that they don’t mind hearing me practice, it still bothers ME. I just can’t relax if somebody is listening.

My first slow practice sessions took place when I was home alone. I remember thinking several times that I could never have practiced like that if someone had been listening. I would have been preoccupied with worries about bugging them with my widdling and clicking metronome.

If you also feel inhibited by people listening to you practice, you owe it to yourself to arrange a private space for yourself where you can tap, alternate pick or sweep to your heart’s content without feeling as if you are annoying others.

Thumbs up for metacognition
This short experiment has convinced me that it is useful to reflect on how you are thinking and feeling when practicing and playing. My guess is that it’s also beneficial to reflect on your thoughts ABOUT practicing in general, particularly if you tend to procrastinate about getting regular practice. Procrastination has been a big problem for me for a long time, and I know that tons of people share this wretched affliction. So as I learn to overcome it I’ll be sharing what I learn here.

Recently I increased my playing speed from 78 bpm to 170 bpm on a certain exercise. In two days. That’s an increase of 118%. I never imagined I’d be able to achieve something like that, but it was surprisingly easy — so easy that I am kicking myself in my metal butt for wasting so many years practicing inefficiently.

I’m so excited about this breakthrough that I had to share how I did it so that you can try it yourself. Here’s how I increased my strict alternate picking speed by over 100%, and finally mastered a picking exercise that had eluded me for YEARS, one that I honestly thought I’d NEVER be able to play.

The key, in a nutshell, is slow practice. Yes, to play fast, you have to play slowly first. Really f’n slowly.

Now before you stop reading in disappointment, rushing straight to the comments section to tell me “That’s nothing new — it’s common sense!”, hear me out.

In my experience, most people — even if they start out playing slowly — try to play too fast too soon. And let’s face it, having to play slowly when you really want to play fast is a drag. You get bored and end up hacking away as fast as you can — fooling yourself for instant gratification — and still sounding “OK.”

But who wants to settle for “OK?”
“OK” is for other people; we’re going for MIGHTY.

Here is how to dramatically increase your speed while maintaining clarity, accuracy, and articulation.

Tools needed: metronome, programmable timer, practice diary for recording progress, and PATIENCE.

Procedure

1. Slow way down and carefully analyze your technique until you discover what is holding you back.
2. Decide what you need to do to fix your technique.
3. Practice this new technique ridiculously slowly, using a metronome.
4. Make sure you can play what you are attempting for one minute solid, relaxed with no mistakes, then…
5. …increase speed by 1 bpm.
6. Repeat until the desired speed is reached, over several sessions if necessary.

Overall approach
If you find your technique getting even slightly sloppy at a certain speed, then that’s your top speed for that practice session. Back up the metronome a few clicks to a comfortable speed again, and finish the practice session by playing a few one-minute repetitions at your highest RELAXED and CLEAN speed. It’s important to finish your session feeling successful so that you will be eager to resume practice the next day.

Remember, the whole point of playing slowly is to give yourself room to analyze your playing, identify any tension or bad habits that are holding you back, experiment to find your optimal technique, and let your brain and muscles gradually learn to consistently get it right. If you are feeling tense, you are playing too fast. To make real progress, you’ll have to fight the natural tendency to want to rush past the boring slow speeds and get to the sexy faster stuff. But if you move slowly move forward, one click at a time, past the frustration point and through the impatience barrier, it will pay off. Guaranteed.

A practical example

Here is the example I started with. It’s an ascending scalar pattern that I’ve wanted to be able to play fast and clean for as long as I can remember, but — no matter how much I practiced it — have never managed (unless you count HACKING my way through it).

Note: in this article BPM refers to quarter notes per minute. The exercise above is sixteenth notes, so at 60 bpm you’d be playing 4×60 =240 notes per minute. At 170 bpm you’d be playing 4×170=680 notes per minute.

I made it my goal to master this pattern. Three notes per string, alternate picking is what I was striving for, but something wasn’t working. Using my original technique I could only play this pattern at 78 bpm without blurring certain notes. Pathetic.

I slowed down to 60 bpm to investigate what I was doing wrong. Carefully observing my picking hand, I discovered that I wasn’t alternate picking all the notes as I thought I was; I was doing some half-assed economy picking here and there. Therein lay the bad habit I needed to fix.

Objectives identified, I started practicing the pattern at 60 bpm following the method described above. (I was reformatting and reinstalling Windows on my laptop at the time, so it gave me something productive to do while waiting.)

By the time Windows and my favorite apps were reinstalled, I had increased my speed to 115 bpm. A couple of times I’d slipped back into my lame economy picking habit and had to slow back down. But by the end of the session I felt confident and relaxed at 115 bpm.

The next day I started at 100 bpm and easily worked my way up to 120 bpm, my goal for that day. In fact, it felt so easy that I kept on going, one metronome click at a time. At this point I reduced the duration for each pass to 45 seconds because it seemed to be enough, but I stuck to increasing speed in one-click increments. In this fashion I gradually reached 140 bpm before starting to feel a bit of tension. I considered 140 my top clean speed for that session.

Then, just as an experiment, the little devil on my shoulder told me to try 150 bpm to see if my technique would fall apart……I tried……It didn’t.

160 bpm?

Piece of cake.

170 bpm?

Too much tension, but it still sounded good.

At 175 bpm I started having timing problems, so I considered 170 bpm my absolute-if-I-have-to-do-it top speed for that day. The slow playing had definitely paid off.

Above 140 bpm I was just starting to feel tension, so that is the speed I logged in my practice diary. But what’s important is that after a measly TWO DAYS I was playing well enough at 170 bpm to use this technique in a recording if I wanted to. It sounded fine; it was the tension I was unhappy with. It is obvious to me now that by using the same method I will eventually reach a relaxed 170 bpm (heck, why not go for 200?). And if a non-shredder like me can do it, so can you.