I have been playing guitar for a long time, but relatively recently decided to try to "shred".
Is it possible that this may simply be impossible for some people?
I have been practicing the same exercises for awhile (simple 4-fret position moving from string to string stuff) and cannot seem to exceed 95-100 bpm with 16th notes.
I purchased a copy of Guitar Pro and tabbed up the exercises in it. Using the speed trainer, I started at 40 bpm and slowly increased tempo to 50 bpm (typically at 1 bpm per round). So, I'd play it 10 times in a row each time increasing by 1 bpm. When I reached 50, I would play it 5 times. Then, I would change the speed range from 41 to 51 bpm and repeat. For around 3 weeks now, I have been stuck at around 95 bpm. If I go to 100bpm, my fingers just feel "sloppy". I can move smoothly at 95, but just that little increase totally kills my control.
Is it possible that my fingers may just never move at the speed I want? My goal was to be able to run through these exercises at 120 bpm in 16ths (which is still quite far from Van Halen/Vai/Satriani who could probably hammer these out at 200 bpm+ or in 32nd notes).
Should I stick with it? Or should I just give into the fact that my joints are too slow and will always be too slow to accomplish this? I'm starting to get a bit discouraged.
"Sometimes you want to give up the guitar, you'll hate the guitar. But if you stick with it, you're gonna be rewarded." - Jimi Hendrix
If you stick to it, you'll get it. Imagine how many hours Vai or any of the other shredders spent in their rooms practiseing scales and stuff. Do you remember when you first started out and you were pulling your hair out because you couldn't change chords properly? (At least that's what happened to me).. Belive me, if you stick to it it'll work, unless of course you have arthritis, in that case, consult your physician (Hey, I'm in no position to get sued by anyone :lol: )
Stairway to Freebird!
Shredding is entirely about technique. It's hard work to get it right. It takes time. Keep at it and you'll get it.
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." -- HST
Have you ever heard the saying " you need to learn to walk, before you can run".
This is a great example of that. Work on finger accuracy the flash techniques will come.
joe
Thanks, guys. I guess this is what I needed to hear.
"Sometimes you want to give up the guitar, you'll hate the guitar. But if you stick with it, you're gonna be rewarded." - Jimi Hendrix
I find that once you get over 100bpm, there's a greater amount of effort required to achieve the same amount of progress - which probably explains why my classical tremelo technique hasn't moved above 120bpm for a long time.
Best,
A :-)
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Continue on with your same method of practicing and you'll find some miraculous things happening...
Do 95 for a while (like 20 minutes) then go to 96... keep on bumping yourself up by the smallest increments avaialble, and you'll be at your 200 before you know it! :mrgreen:
Do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life...
I'm no shredder thats for certain but I can tell you the exercises do work if you do them properly. The main thing to gain is strength, you may feel that your fingers are already strong enough but they probably aren't.
From my own experience....
I started trying to improve my speed a few years back and then I started again recently. With a few months of good training ( I was doing about 20 hours per week or more) you should see a significant improvement.
I spent years playing max speed cleanly around 110 for 16ths and then a few months good practice got me to about 120 - 130 clean on a good day for certain scales and runs and around 150-160 for chromatic exercises. (All alternate picking)
Even if you dont reach the speed you want you will still end up playing your 95 -100 with absolute ease.
What worked for me is don't stick with just a few exercises at a time, do as many variations as you can, the more variation the better, doesnt matter how slow. You can strengthen your fingers with your normal jamming as well, stick on a backing track and just jam away but use all the fingers you wouldn't normally, jam for a while using just index and pinky then swap to ring and pinky (thats hard) but keeps it interesting.
Hammer and pull off exercises are probably more important than you may realise, these really build good strength however listen carefully to them, these are all to easy to play sloppy if you dont listen carefully, slow down tape it and listen, chromatic hammer and pull off exercises each note should sound as clean as picked just without so much attack, if sounds blurred then slow it down and concentrate on that.
Always come back on a scale, dont be tempted to keep playing upwards only.
Long stretch exercises are also good for building strength, try not to stick to just 4 fret 4 fingers, stretch accross 5 and 6 frets.
One other thing that I have only ever heard one person mention and once I took notice of it I found it was a big factor in my technique... many people can play the speeds necassary on the right and the left hand, what they dont concentrate on is the syncronisation of the two, listen real hard and anylise what you are doing, are they in sync. You can test this on one string, get 16ths going on the pick hand at a fast even rate and then just back and forth on two frets listen real hard to see if they are together. After carefull listening I found with myself that I could play the left hand and the right hand at a certain speed they werent quite linking up. On the two finger test I found that my middle finger was coming down a real fraction too late, so basically I had the speed but not the timing. This helped me enormously once I realised.
Basically work real hard to find where you real weekness is and you will find you can improve I'm almost certain, I always beleived I couldn't get faster but now I beleive that with the right work you can do it... by the way I'm 41 and still getting faster. I just don't practice quite enough at it :)
Anyway... just my 2 cents, everybody may be different but I would say pay carefull attention to where you might be lacking and work on that.
Would be interesting though, if you do develop come back and let us know or keep this thread going I think it could be interesting to see how quickly people develop speed.
Oh yeah, one other thing.... relaxed hands!
Lee
I did something a bit different today. I set up the Guitar Pro "Speed Trainer" to run from 90 to 100 increasing by 1 bpm. Then, I practiced with my eyes closed. This way, I wouldn't be tempted to watch the notes or the tempo. I know the exercise well, and I didn't want to know how fast I was playing it. I'm trying to see if my body is able to overcome the psychological barriers that my mind imposes on it.
After playing through several times, I managed to keep a smooth progression in 16ths at 100 bpm which is a good bit better than the 95 I was doing. 95 now felt "slow" in a way. I'll still practice there, of course, to maintain consistency and motion.
I set it back to 90 and made the range to 120 stepping by 1 bpm. Again, I closed my eyes and worked through. I didn't really start getting "flustered" until right around 105-107 bpm!
Right now, I'm limiting myself on purpose to 101 bpm. This is so that I can work on the relaxation part of it. I noticed as I get faster, my right soulder and elbow tenses up. I found myself holding my sholder up by my ear on the picking hand. I need to get more conscious of it and fight myself to relax a bit more. I may slow myself back down on purpose to below 100 bpm just to work this "quirk" out.
"Sometimes you want to give up the guitar, you'll hate the guitar. But if you stick with it, you're gonna be rewarded." - Jimi Hendrix
