Learn Guitar Blog

Learn to Play Guitar Fast

June 18, 2006 on 3:58 pm | In Aaron Shearer, Pumping Nylon, Scott Tennant, learn to play guitar fast |

There are many beginner guitarists out there eager to learn to play the guitar easily. However, just about as many have a rather vague idea about what this means. This article is aimed to clear out a few misconceptions about playing fast, state some basic rules about learning to play the guitar Fast and provide you with a general idea about the way this style of playing should be used.

Misconceptions about Playing the Guitar Fast

Despite this increasing trend about playing fast, speed is not relevant by itself. However, used in the context of a good music and with taste, speed really is a good thing.

Another misconception about speed is that in order to learn to play guitar fast you have to practice Fast. It is indeed true that at some point you will need to practice Fast. However, the first step is to develop some techniques before you can work on playing fast. There’s no way to learn these techniques other than slowly.

How to Learn to Play Guitar fast?

The key to playing fast is being able to think before you play. Aaron Shearer, a famous guitar teacher, promoted the “aim directed movement”, meaning that you have to know exactly where your fingers should go before you move them there. You can only achieve this by slow practice.

You should develop your finger strength as well, and practice not only flexing the finger, but extending it as well. Since we were born we have used our hands to grab things and hold them, developing our flexors. You need to develop your extensors as well in order to learn to play guitar fast. A good way to do this is by practicing Rasgueados.

You can build body energy to hold out during the fast playing periods by practicing speed bursts. On a speed burst you have to take a small piece of a scale and play it forwards and backwards using the eighth note as the rhythmic value for every note. Play the same part of the scale backwards and forwards without stopping, using the sixteenth note instead. Thus you can isolate the problems in playing a scale, such as string crossings or shifts.

How to Use Speed the Right Way?

Scott Tennant makes a good statement about speed in his book, Pumping Nylon. He states that when you look at a good piece of music, you notice that the Fast-playing parts only last for a couple of measures. While knowing your scales and being able to play them quickly is a good thing, it’s not necessary to use this speed for long periods of time.

There are several articles available online to help you learn to play guitar fast. However, don’t expect it to come is. There will actually be a lot of work involved. You should begin by learning about several strategies of developing your finger strength, speed bursts and Rasgueados.