Hey GMCers,
In my everlasting quest to shred machine I've come across a very vital point that I've been missing for a really long time.
As I've mentioned in a couple of the practice threads I've really been working on some of Petrucci's scale fragments to start building speed. Over the first couple days I was amazed at my speed progression. I was jumping sometimes 20bpm per DAY. That's pretty awesome if I do say so myself and it seemed to good to be true... because it was.
I noticed that as I started getting higher and higher into BPM land that sometimes my playing would just die. Nothing would work, my fretting hand was way too slow and things just were not going the way they were supposed to!
After a couple days I realized what I was missing: STAMINA!
Sure I could play the licks at 130 or 140bpm, but I could only play them a few times before it all fell apart. The reason was because I didn't practice my licks for as long as I should have.
Since it took me so long to discover this for myself I thought I'd share my little testimony here in hopes that it can aid someone else in their journey.
If you are playing a repetitious pattern exercise, play it for AT LEAST one minute steadily before you raise that bpm level. You'll be thankful once you get up there in speed. It kills your hand, but that's how the muscle and ever important stamina.
Playing a lick for 5-10s at 140bpm like I was trying to (cutting the corners!) just doesn't cut it and won't lead you to be riffing at soloing at even higher speeds for minutes or hours during a concert or gig!
Hope this helps!