Practicing Guitar, About practice Options

[Victor Simion]

I wonder when practicing guitar should you play every note as accurate and as clear as possible and slow down as much as needed?
Because I found out that the faster I try to play it still sounds ok, but not as clean and as clear as if I slow down:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAMs2UauZPk...channel=VictorS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDHrHpn0XRU...channel=VictorS


I was looking at this video and found his playing incredible fast and clean:


How do you think it's the best way to achieve this?

So the question is:
When practicing playing guitar most of the time you should stay as close as possible to your maximum speed, where you feel that you hand synch is going to break, or you should stay in your comfort zone where you can get every note as clear as possible.

What is your opinion and how did you reach the speed and accuracy of your guitar playing?

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[Todd Simpson]

To be honest, in terms of sheer speed, playing only slowly and cleanly isn't always the best way to play fast. It's good preparation to play fast, but these are two different ways of playing (slow and fast). As you speed up, and reach your limit, you may notice that you lose a bit of control. This is temporary. Eventually, your precision and control will stay with you even when playing at a very brisk pace.

Once you can play something slow and clean, it's time to speed it up. One approach is to play in "bursts" which allows your fingers to play a few notes briskly to let your fingers feel what it will be like later on. You can tie bursts together by playing a small group of notes, then another group and then joining those groups.

Another way is the traditional way of playing with a drum beat or clik or metronome and just slowly increasing the speed bit by bit. This can be tedious and prevents many players from every getting there. It's not easy. It takes far more time than it seems like it should. Whats worse, the progress can seem slow that it seems like no progress at all. This is frustrating and leads many players to quit.

In both cases the key is simple. Don't quit. Even when progress seems slow, it's being made. Getting "fast" is not typically a quick process. It takes a tone of time and effort. of course, it seems counterinuitive when youtube players in their early teens can shred like the wind. These players have been practicing since they could walk.

One thing to keep in mind is that most progress on speed is made near the limit. So playing at or near your limit is a good way to push deeper in to it. With each repetition, progress

BTW your practice vids are really good!! You have solid technique and it's really just a matter of time imho. One tip I would give is to try to use distortion always to allow yourself to hear any gaps in your mute or your technique. Also, find the least pressure possible for fretting and picking. This one thing can make all the difference. Notice how Mr Romeo looks like he is barely putting out any effort at all? Thats the secret

Here is a great vid from BERNTH with some great tips to shave years off of your journey!


Here is a quick practice vid I made. Notice my picking and fretting hand are not working that hard.

I wonder when practicing guitar should you play every note as accurate and as clear as possible and slow down as much

How do you think it's the best way to achieve this?

So the question is:
When practicing playing guitar most of the time you should stay as close as possible to your maximum speed, where you feel that you hand synch is going to break, or you should stay in your comfort zone where you can get every note as clear as possible.

What is your opinion and how did you reach the speed and accuracy of your guitar playing?

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

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This post has been edited by Todd Simpson: Jan 27 2022, 10:41 PM

[Monica Gheorghev...]

It's always a mix of things that helps to achieve speed and accuracy.
You can stay 10 hours/day practicing the same thing without making any step further. It's always about how you practice and not how much you practice. But....always try to exceed your limits.


1. Record yourself and analyze your playing. Take a close look at your hands position. When you notice that at a particular speed things started sounds bad, try to detect why. The answer for any problem it's always in front of our eyes. Look if:
- your left hand keep playing with minimized movements
- your right hand don't do unnecessary motions.
- your hands are still in a good sync
- your hands became tensed
- you changed the angle of the pick
- some of your fingers are weaker than others

2. Once you detected the problem, add additional exercises. Sometimes people who want to play fast just focus on the alternate picking technique. You will be surprised how much other techniques can help to solve the speed and accuracy problem.

- if you think that the main problem that appear when you want to play very fast it's a hand sync, change the approach. The sweep technique it's amazingly good in helping at hand sync.

- if your ring finger and pinky are too weak to speed up, then add in your practice the legato technique. It will always help your fingers to have more strength.

- if the notes that you play doesn't sound clear, practice with the guitar unplugged.

3. Practicing just separate exercises, it's not a good help to improve the overall accuracy in playing. It's always good to play lessons, songs which contain a mix of techniques.


All I wrote above are things that I applied (thanks to my amazing instructor Darius Wave ) and helped me to achieve my current technical level.

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This post has been edited by Monica Gheorghevici: Jan 28 2022, 11:40 AM

[Storm Linnebjerg]

As a side note to "record yourself" as Monica said, many more modern mobile phones are able to do slow motion recordings or super slow motion recordings. Now, that's not something you want to be using all the time, but I think it's interesting if you feel there's a certain problem. Some phones can even record up to 900 fps or so now a days.

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[Todd Simpson]

MONICA Well said!! it's important to record yourself and to watch it back. Until you record yourself and see it, you really don't know what you just played. During playing, one can make mistakes that you don't even notice until you watch it back. It's a step that many folks skip, but it's a great tool to help you make progress.

As BEN said, slow motion can help you isolate even further but if your phone doesn't do that, that's ok. It's just important to see what you are playing by watching recordings of yourself. The "Red light syndrome" is something you may have to work through. But it's worth it. Take the time. Make a recording of your practice when you hit something that seems tricky.

I cant believe I left recording yourself out of my post. Got too deep in the woods on other details it seems. Many thanks to Monica for adding this bit in. It really is the best thing one can do to get better.

It's always a mix of things that helps to achieve speed and accuracy.


All I wrote above are things that I applied (thanks to my amazing instructor Darius Wave ) and helped me to achieve my current technical level.

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

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This post has been edited by Todd Simpson: Jan 28 2022, 08:58 PM

[Storm Linnebjerg]

Yeah, the "slow motion" thing isn't something I'd actively use - only maybe on the rare occassions you're stuck feeling something is not correct. It was just an interesting feature I noticed on newer phones. It can certainly help make it easier to see if you use too wide motions or do something else that holds you back

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[Victor Simion]

Hi,

Here I want to share the way I practice.
I choose chromatic scale with clean tone only for test purposes, but it could be anything from scales, sweep picking to a full lesson containing whatever I like.

I record myself in Reaper and then I listen to see if I am playing on time by looking at the metronome click and the notes waveform, then I listen to see if all the notes I am playing are clean. Also I can see if the notes are played clean just by looking at the waveform:

Chromatic Speed Bursts at 140 BPM:

This is above my comfort speed by since there are a few notes I consider this to sound very good except some tiny details in the first one, that I circled in the screenshot attached:

Here I am playing more notes, Chromatic Scale this should be in my comfort speed:
Chromatic Scale at 80 BPM:

This being in my comfort speed I can play it faster and speed it up until I get it to my limit speed, or should I slow it down and worry about make it sound more cleaner, better dynamics, smoother transitions?

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[Monica Gheorghev...]

How you check yourself it's good but in this way you cover only the audio part. You can spot the weaknesses but you will try to solve the issues in a blind way. You will not know what cause the problem and how to fix it. You will continuing the practice in the same way and at some point this can lead you in a stuck.
That's why I said about the advantages of recording constantly a video. This will allow you to see what exactly your hands do.

I like more your take at 140 bpm because has a smoother transition and somehow sounds better than the one which is in your comfort zone.
Take care at your right hand and apart from the accented notes, always focus to pick the rest of the notes using the same strength.
Of course, this in the case that you don't want to play a run with crescendo but this is other story.

You can already try pushing the speed over 140 bpm. But...always spend a part of the time practicing at a slower tempo. In your comfort zone, things should always sound perfect.

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This post has been edited by Monica Gheorghevici: Jan 29 2022, 10:06 PM

[Todd Simpson]

Well said. Audio is only half the battle. It will serve you well to record video of yourself playing and watching it back. You can use a web cam or even your phone. Whatever is easy and quick so that it just becomes part of your process

As for speeding up, I'd say try the traditional method of just slowly increasing the metronome/click in reaper one BPM at a time. It can be a solo over a backing, or a scale. Just play it clean and build up speed one or two bpm at a time once you hit your limit. Also, again I'd say use more distortion. Playing with a clean tone hides imperfections that should be addressed.

Some very good advice here from Monica about using an even pick strike. Sometimes, when we speed up, our hands tense up and we pick harder. This is not a good thing. It's important to practice striking and fretting with the least amount of pressure/tension possible. It's something that takes time as it's another thing to focus on while playing but it's worth it.

CHeck out this video about optimizing the pressure used by your hands. It's got some great drills to help set your finger/pick pressure.

How you check yourself it's good but in this way you cover only the audio part. You can spot the weaknesses but you will try to solve the issues in a blind way. You will not know what cause the problem and how to fix it. You will continuing the practice in the same way and at some point this can lead you in a stuck.
That's why I said about the advantages of recording constantly a video. This will allow you to see what exactly your hands do.

I like more your take at 140 bpm because has a smoother transition and somehow sounds better than the one which is in your comfort zone.
Take care at your right hand and apart from the accented notes, always focus to pick the rest of the notes using the same strength.
Of course, this in the case that you don't want to play a run with crescendo but this is other story.

You can already try pushing the speed over 140 bpm. But...always spend a part of the time practicing at a slower tempo. In your comfort zone, things should always sound perfect.

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

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This post has been edited by Todd Simpson: Jan 30 2022, 12:17 AM

[Victor Simion]

Thank you all for help, I got some really great advice.

As for speeding up, I'd say try the traditional method of just slowly increasing the metronome/click in reaper one BPM at a time. It can be a solo over a backing, or a scale. Just play it clean and build up speed one or two bpm at a time once you hit your limit. Also, again I'd say use more distortion. Playing with a clean tone hides imperfections that should be addressed.

Yes, I also do this, slowly increasing the speed until I hit my limit.
And I am practicing with distorsion also, to see if there is any noise etc., but also sometimes I switch to clean tone to check my articulation.

CHeck out this video about optimizing the pressure used by your hands. It's got some great drills to help set your finger/pick pressure.

I found out about too much pressure a while ago, but after watching this video I see that there is still room to reduce the pressure I use when playing. I just hope that this new habit of reducing more of the pressure will stick with me because sometimes I can get back in default mode.

How you check yourself it's good but in this way you cover only the audio part. You can spot the weaknesses but you will try to solve the issues in a blind way. You will not know what cause the problem and how to fix it. You will continuing the practice in the same way and at some point this can lead you in a stuck.
That's why I said about the advantages of recording constantly a video. This will allow you to see what exactly your hands do.

Most of the time from when I started playing guitar I almost never recorded my playing and that resulted in a very sloppy playing.
More recently I started recording audio and try to clean and fix my playing.

As for recording that is something I always did just to post here to receive feedback but I never really analyzed my playing from looking at myself.

I just remembered that I recorded myself on video a few years ago and I realized that my fingers were jumping way too much.
Then I tried to keep my fingers close and I did a huge improvement compared to how it was before but if I ask the instructors over here maybe they will tell me that there is still room for more improvement

Anyway I think I should also try to give feedback to my playing not only by hearing the audio I play, but also by looking at my video.

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This post has been edited by Victor Simion: Jan 30 2022, 11:36 AM

[Victor Simion]

How you check yourself it's good but in this way you cover only the audio part. You can spot the weaknesses but you will try to solve the issues in a blind way. You will not know what cause the problem and how to fix it. You will continuing the practice in the same way and at some point this can lead you in a stuck.
That's why I said about the advantages of recording constantly a video. This will allow you to see what exactly your hands do.

I like more your take at 140 bpm because has a smoother transition and somehow sounds better than the one which is in your comfort zone.
Take care at your right hand and apart from the accented notes, always focus to pick the rest of the notes using the same strength.
Of course, this in the case that you don't want to play a run with crescendo but this is other story.

You can already try pushing the speed over 140 bpm. But...always spend a part of the time practicing at a slower tempo. In your comfort zone, things should always sound perfect.

You wrote that my playing is better at 140bpm, than 80bpm and there could be a number of reasons:
- at the faster tempo there are only a few notes
- at the faster tempo there are no string crossings

But the idea is to make it sound perfect at 80bpm also because in a real example I am not playing always speed bursts, I also have to play long phrases.

What should be the steps to fix this and make it sound crystal clear?

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[Monica Gheorghev...]

You wrote that my playing is better at 140bpm, than 80bpm and there could be a number of reasons:
- at the faster tempo there are only a few notes
- at the faster tempo there are no string crossings

But the idea is to make it sound perfect at 80bpm also because in a real example I am not playing always speed bursts, I also have to play long phrases.

What should be the steps to fix this and make it sound crystal clear?

From what I hear (because we have just the audio take), I think you need just to make few adjustments.


1. Try to minimize the left hand movements (this helps at accuracy). It doesn't sound fluent enough when you change the strings. Usually, when we are in the comfort zone (at a lower tempo) we tend to make much wide movements. We not even realize this thing. The tempo is slow enough to let bad habits appear. That's why it's better to constantly verify yourself with a video.

2. Focus at your right hand. See if you also need to minimize the movements.
How I said in the previous message, be careful to pick the notes with the same strength (apart of accented notes). This will give to your runs a flawless sound.
When the strength of picking is not well controlled, even if you play the notes equal (from the timing point of view), will give a kind of a sloppy feeling.

3. Don't try to manage too many things in the same time. A day focus only at your right hand, next day work at your left hand and so on.

4. When you practice (this as a general advise because I don't know how you practice), avoid to play runs only on the same place on guitar. People usually choose only comfortable spots. That's a huge mistake. Change the positions to let your hands learn the technique itself.

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