This is fine for developing basic coordination between your left and right hands, but it’s not exactly musical.

Life is short: if you’re going to spend time working on technical exercises, it makes more sense to design exercises that at least have some potential for musical application. Making an exercise more musical makes it more fun to play as well.

With some slight changes to the warm-up exercise above you can turn it into a true chromatic scale. This gives you both coordination practice AND the benefit of musical applicability:

Chromatic exercise 1 PDF ::: Guitar Pro 5

Make sure that you stick to strict alternate picking, even on the slides — every note should be picked.

I encourage you to experiment with variations on this exercise — for example, playing it with a triplet feel instead of straight sixteenths. And make sure that NO MATTER WHAT you play it clean. If it’s sloppy, you’re playing too fast. Pay particular attention to fingers 2 and 3 — for me those tend to be the troublemakers.

Have fun!

Arpeggios, arpeggios. You guitar players just can’t get enough of sweeping arpeggios! Since posting my guitar arpeggio videos on LoserTube I’ve been getting lots of email questions about how to practice them. My first reaction is always, “Why are you asking me? Go ask someone who knows, like Rusty Cooley!”

But because 1) it’s rude not to answer (polite) questions, and 2) I want to share the answers with as many people as possible, I’ve recently decided to answer your guitar-related questions here on my blog rather than in email.

Right then, enough background. Let’s get to today’s question!

John Oentoro emailed to ask:

Hi Ms. Lori, I’m John and I’ve stumbled upon your lesson/article on playing fast. I love it. I understand playing in 16th notes which is 4 notes played every beat. How do you play sweeping arpeggios to a metronome, though? Is it the same 16th note technique? Please use an easy example, something like an Amaj arpeggio (not the rolling one) hehe.

John, you can play ANYTHING YOU WANT to a metronome. You just need to set the metronome to the time signature that fits what you want to practice. When you practice arpeggios, for example, you don’t have to stick to sixteenth notes. You can play triplets, or dotted thirty-second notes, or whatever the heck kind of notes you want. I’m not sure how much you know about music theory, but the basics about meter and time signatures are useful to know. (Readers, please post in comments if you know of good online tutorials about time signatures, meter and note values.)

Because you asked so nicely, John, I’ve braved tabbing hell to create a couple of examples for you. The two examples incorporate the same number of notes, but they are arranged in different rhythmic groupings. The first uses straight sixteenth notes in 3/4 time, the second uses eighth note triplets in 4/4 time. Same notes, different feel.

Aaug sweep with sixteenths 3/4 time (guitar pro 5 file)

Aaug sweep with triplets in 4/4 (guitar pro 5 file)

I hope this clears things up for you, John. If you have any more questions, please post in comments rather than email so that everyone can benefit from the discussion

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.

Tab coming later Thanks to Rob for reminding me to post some more of my glorious tabbing art. Here it is:


[update: Frankly admitting that I hate jazz has has sure ruffled some feathers. I had no idea that complete strangers would be so emotionally invested in my private musical tastes. It's actually quite flattering.

Thanks for confirming my suspicion that the "if you don't like jazz you are an ignorant cretin" attitude is expressed by self-important, pretentious, holier-than-thou asshats who, by appointing themselves the arbiters of the musical tastes of others, give jazz a bad name amongst those who dislike its characteristic sound. I hate jazz, big f'n deal; I also hate Swedish "dansmusik," but love Mussorgsky, meerkats, and effervescent vitamin C. The difference is that I respect your right to hate the things I cherish. It just leaves more for me to enjoy.

I have, however, amended some sloppy wording in my original post: 7ths and 9ths are, of course, used in many genres of music -- not just in jazz-- and often to beautiful effect. But in my own experience, it's only the way they are used in many genres of jazz that is particularly vile. Of course I would change my opinion if I ever heard a piece of jazz music that didn't make me want to pour boiling water into my ears to drown out the discordant noise. Call me a "jazz agnostic."]

Here’s another quick’n'dirty sweeping arpeggio video for ya. E-minor sweeps have of course been done to death by guitar players since Yngwie made them compulsory for everyone in the early 80s. But even so, this one might be a good starter arpeggio for those of you who are still relatively new to sweep technique. It will at least get your fingers moving up and down the neck, rather than just sticking to one position. And what the heck, it will give all the knee-jerk contrarians and lowest-common-denominator, auto-fellating flamethrowers on guitar forums something new to bash me for…
…always happy to put my neck on the chopping block (so you won’t have to) :p

You can download the WMV or the MOV (about 1 mb each). Please don’t hotlink to the video files; it’s better if you just send people to this page (the URL is in the hot pink post title above).

Behold the awesome wonder of my TAB

[Or live large and download my even more stupendous powertab file.]

                                                                            T
                                                                             |----3----|
|-----------------------------------------------15h19-24p19p15--------------------------|
|--------------------------------------------17--------------------17-----------------------|
|-----------------------------------------16--------------------------16--------------------|
|--------------------------------------17--------------------------------17-----------------|
|----------------------------10-14-/19--------------------------------------19-\14p10-------|
|-0h3h7p3-/7-12p7-12------------------------------------------------------------------12----|

Tab key
*********
 h   — hammer-on
 p   — pull-off
 /\  — slides (ooh, baby!)
 T   — tap

Humble request: If you want to tell people about these videos, please link to the blog article’s permalink (it’s the url in the title above) so people can see the vids in context. Please don’t hotlink to the video files. I provide downloadable copies as a courtesy to those who (for whatever reason) can’t stream media.
Download Quicktime (25Mb)
Download WMV (25Mb)
[Update] We now have TAB, courtesy of Altruizine (thanks!). Here it is

h - hammeron
p - pulloff
~ - crazy loonie whammy bar vibrato insanity
t - tap harmonic
/ - slide up
\ - slide down
x - raked 

 C#5&n                    F5        A5          F5
-9h12p9p8--------------------------------------------------------
----------11p9p8---6-9-8-6---------------------------------------
---------------------------9-6-5~--------5-4~---2~---1--(t13)---
---------------------------------------3---------------------------
-------------------------------------3------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------

              G#5                                        F5
-------4-6-8-/16~----\11-8----------------------------------------------
-4-6-8----------------------11-9----------------------------------------
---------------------------------8--------------------------------------
-----------------------------------10--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------11-\-6-3-------3-6-8---h9p8\6/8----
-----------------------------------------------6-4-6-----------------------

                    A5                              G#5
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------10-12-17---13-17-16--13------
---10-----12-----13/14-----------9-------------------------------
--------------------x---------10----------------------------------
-8----/10----/11---/12-----12------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------

                           G5
---------10-11-13-10-11-13-15----------
-9-11-13-------------------------------
----------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Making guitar videos for the site also gives me a reason to actually practice. The only guitar practice I get is when I’m recording or getting ready for a tour: I *never* work on technique. Ever. That’s something I’d like to change for 2007 (call it a New Year’s resolution).

Here’s the first guitar video: it demonstrates of my favorite sweeping arpeggios. The idea for this sweep came to me when trying to figure out part of what the first violin plays in Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (my favoreeeet). It’s a three octave major shape with an added 2nd (or 9th, whatever you want to call it). And it has some slides in it too (I love doing little sliding thingies).

If you guys like these, I’ll record more.

Download: WMV (10 mb) ::: MOV (10 Mb)
[Update: here's the tab...what I won't do for you, my little chickadees...;-) ]

Free Guitar Video Lessons Teacher-chat, tabs, backings, scales, virtual bands