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What holds most players back when attempting to play at higher speeds is their tendency to tense up. The main reason for this is that players who face this have not practiced relaxation at higher speeds.  The most crucial element to being able to play fast is the ability to be relaxed and stay relaxed while playing fast for larger chunks of time. Although there are other factors involved when playing at higher speeds, this article will focus only on the relaxation aspect.

Being able to relax at higher speeds requires a different approach from just starting out slow using a metronome and gradually increasing the bmp until eventually reaching your desired tempo. High level players seem to go in and between slow melodic lines and blistering high speeds with such ease. Using speed bursts allows you to do exactly that!

A speed burst is just a short repetition of a significantly faster line lodged between more reps of the same line at slower and more manageable speeds. What this does is trains you to go from zero to hundred and back to zero. You would be generally quite relaxed at slower tempos. Adding a short rep of a speed burst and having to come back to the initial base tempo helps you train relaxation at fast tempos, but in smaller doses.

Here is how you can work on this. Create any short repeating 3 note pattern on one string.

Here’s an example you can use:

Play this phrase as triplets (3 notes per click) to a metronome set between 60bpm to 80bpm. As you are playing, focus on relaxing your hands and any other part of your body that usually tenses up. Once you are completely relaxed, double up the speed in which you are playing that phrase. This means going from 3 notes per click to 6 notes per click. Do this for ONLY ONE REP and immediately return to playing 3 notes per click.

Now you will need to analyse any potential weak areas of the speed burst rep. The goal here is to be just as relaxed when playing that one speed burst rep as you are playing the regular 3 note per click reps. Keep repeating this process until the speed burst feels just as easy and the quality of each note is clear and articulate. You can even try adding more reps of the speed burst. See how many reps you can get right before it starts to fall apart and use that as your target to keep pushing higher. Gradually increase the speed of the metronome as you get more comfortable with this at your current bmp. Do not increase it too much too quickly.

You may use any repeating pattern for this exercise. Depending on your pattern, you might need to make adjustments as to how to fit it over a metronome click.

Learning to play guitar on your own can be frustrating and challenging, especially if you don’t know what to do. Having a great teacher makes the whole process more fun, enjoyable and gets you real results fast.

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