Part I - On Technique

Many guitarists follow an “intuitive” practice routine like the below. I know I did when I started.

1. Practice scales or technical exercises until the fingers are limbered up.

2. Take a new song, lick, scale, or solo, set the metronome at a slow tempo, and start playing. Perfect it at that lower tempo. Repeat until it’s perfect. Gradually bump up the speed until you hit the final speed, always being sure to have it secure at each step.

3. At the end of a long practice session, the fingers are flying, so it’s time to relax, really fly and enjoy playing!

4. Once a lick, song, or solo is down, keep playing until it’s “under the fingers”

While it seems so intuitively logical, and is advocated by many players and teachers, this process creates problems for the vast majority of guitarists (case study: me). Practicing in this way generally creates “speed walls”, hard tempo limits above which the guitarist simply can’t play. Also, the above tells nothing about what to do when working through technical problems, other than repeat them endlessly.

If the above method worked, we’d say many more advanced players, and there would be no need for the gamut of drills and workshops available today!

Rather than follow the above intuitive method, we can cut to the chase and start fast. But this should be tempered with understanding how the body acquires fine motor skills, especially skills that need to function at high speeds.

• Part I - On Technique
• The Nervous System
  • Excitation and inhibition
  • Make it fun
  • Rest
• Speed
  • Acquiring Speed
    • Part 1: Start with speed
    • Part 2: Assess and clean up
• Why “Start slow” fails
• Tension and Relaxation
  • Causes of tension
  • Don’t “play through” tension
  • Relaxation drills
    • General relaxation
    • Fretting hand
    • Picking hand