Is there anyway to improve picking speed? I'm not talking about simple chromatic exercises. I mean, your wrist can only move so quickly. Is it possible to strengthen the wrist so as to make it faster?

practice

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Draw the skin of your penis, all the time, every second a day, forward and back, very smothly, and it will work for you.

I need to make my self a bit more clear. I mean, what kind of physical exercises are good for strengthening the wrist. I can practice all I want and I'm only going to get as fast as my wrist will allow.

Just practise your wriste, also the way i just told you, but just regular training the wrist is enough, like you can practise with a little ball you can squeze or something

even if you practice chromatics all the time, you should still be able to pick up speed, but maybe you should get your self a metronome

I was at a drum clinic once and one of the main things that I got out of it was watch a hockey, baseball, soccer game and for the entirety of the game just practice picking and then once theres a break go make yourself a sandwich and then keep playing when second period comes on.

Whoa! As fi the thread Nazis havn't shut this thread down witht he response "STFU NOOB USE THE SEARCH."

If you're serious about devoloping speed, stick at the things you can't do and practice them hard. Get Try Stetina's "Speed Mechanics" and work through that, a metronome is a good tool to aid you in your quest.

Armed with that information, the rest is up to you. If you don't put the time and practice in, you won't develop your speed at an increased rate, so if you're not developing speed knowing this, you're not putting enough work into it. Not being an arse, just stating the cold fact of guitar wisdom

Cool, thanks for the book tip. Looks good. I think I've seen that somewhere before but never gave it a second glance. I don't have a metronome, but I have a shitty drum machine on my effects processor that at least does the job. I've been playing guitar for quite a while, but my speed has always been terrible. And I don't just mean playing leads fast and clear. I mean just tremolo picking as fast as I can, even if it doesn't come out clean and clear, I've never been able to do it at any real speed. I won't even mention it, it's so laughable. And then I see people who just started playing and they can tremolo pick so much faster it pisses me off. Oh well, that's why I've been a blues player most of the time.

Welcome back to the dark side

If it's specifically your alternate picking you want to imrpove, I strongly recomend excercises such as this:

e--0-4-0-5-0-7-0-8-0-10-0-12-0-13-0-12-back down (A harmonic minor)

Using a consistent up, down, up, down etc stroke action.

It will probably feel horrible and unnatural at first, but excercises that feel like that are generally the ones you need to practice to develop technique. Make sure that at whatever speed you're playing, it's clean and the note spacing is equal; pay attention that the tone between up and down strokes don't differ too greatly. It's quite likely your upstrokes will be poorer in quality, though you should soon see an improvement after playing excercises of this style. The use of the open string in excercises such as this vastly help picking, as your picking hand is having to deal with the small changes in string height (or action) between each pick stroke.

If you find it hard and ignore it, you won't find it much easier next time you try.

for alternate picking try the e natural minor, it sounds pretty sweet.
e-0-2-0-3-0-5-0-7-0-8-0-10/12~--
just mess around and find ur own variations of it.
try tritons, they will increase ur pinky speed, chords help well the ones that make u use all of ur fingers. and scales/scale patterns wouldnt kill u to know.
p.s. dont forget the chromatic scale

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what is a chromatic scale?? Juat give a quick link so i can udnerstand this.

Use a metronome .start slowly and gradually increase the tempo

Try scales

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dude the chromatic scale is the 01234 shit

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what should i just play from fret (open 0) from 1-5 fret, just that?
is that a chromatic scale?

here u go, do the same pattern just decending. i suggest u learn some scales/patterns, cuz that will help u out later on
e---------------------------------------------------0-1-2-3-4-
b-----------------------------------------0-1-2-3-4-----------
G-------------------------------0-1-2-3-4---------------------
D---------------------0-1-2-3-4-------------------------------
A-----------0-1-2-3-4-----------------------------------------
E-0-1-2-3-4---------------------------------------------------

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thanks. And what about octaves, what are those?

maybe u should just take 1 or 2 guitar lessons if possible, to get the basic stuff down, cuz it seems that ur a beginner.

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either that or go to the library and do some reading on music. but when u start to get it, it starts becoming easier

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It comes down to slaving away with a metronome or some other time keeping device, and for long hours. And, furthermore, if you want to be the best, you have to make sure that these hours are longer than everyone else's, and that your methods are more efficient than anyone else's. Not that we all can ever agree on who's the greatest in the world, but if you reach for that goal, along the way you'll become one hell of a musician.

Cool. Thanks for the tips. By the way, I do know a lot of scale patterns and that type of shit. My problem is just speed. And I'm not really trying to be the greatest ever or anything like that. Really I just want to be able to develop some killer rythym chops, Dime-style. I was practicing some of his shit, working up speed, then I realized, "dude, I can't go any faster, damnit!" I play mostly legato leads anyway, but they're still damn slow. And I read about people playing sixteenths at 200 bpm, and it seems like thats normal or something. And I'm just like shit, I can barely play eights at that tempo, on a good day. Anyway, thanks for the tips.

if u want dime-style i suggest u try legato. and also check out joe satriani

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The chromatic scale is just every note.

For a chord/scale list look here

Yes, but right now, to me, its only a couple of dots to some strings, with numbers on them, for now, it doesn`t make sence to me.
I am reading a good webpage right now.

But anotehr question for now, what is metronome?

I think one of the best ways to build speed is using triplets. It won't work in just a few days though, you MUST give it time. Trust me, they work.

Example:
----------8
--------7---7
------6-------6
----5-----------5

But plat each note THREE TIMES and use a METRONOME. Because of the odd picking pattern, your wrist gets a major work out, especially after a few minutes. It is best to sit down when you have at least 10-15 minutes of time, and do this exercise with no more than three small breaks. After a while, you'll be able to get around the fretboard much easier, AND play much faster.

I hope this helps, because it's REALLY helping me. Just give it time. I mean, I'm really slow, I practice this exercise at a top speed of 168 bpm(three per beat), but before I was only at like 15-something. So hey, it works, and I've only been doing it for about a week(and actually not very consistently )

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http://s64.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=...5T0KHRYA34S6BVM

TS:Here is a picking exercise that I made up a while ago. If you wanna build some speed and have a good picking exercise this should be helpful.


-Jon

What is a metronome???! show me a picture, what does ti do?

as some people already said: practice scales ..and absolutely start using alternate picking (down, up, down, up..) immediately. get comfortable with alternate picking, hammer-ons and pull-offs and you will be playing faster. a friend of mine is too stubborn to learn alternate picking and when he plays shit it never sounds in time.

I know that Dime does a lot of legato in his leads. I'm talking about his rythm chops, which are definitely not done with legato. Think Cowboys or Mouth for War. I can play the latter at almost full speed, but not quite. A better example would be Pyscho Holiday. I know, I know, I'm just slow. But chromatics and shit will get me up to (my) full speed, but my full speed is so damn slow.

Its all about practice practice practice it comes within time man.

A metronome makes "click" sounds at specific tempos - it keeps you in time while you are practicing exercises. Type 'metronome' into google images for many pictures of metronomes.

free online metronome
http://www.metronomeonline.com/

Please explain better, i don`t understand what you mean by click when at specific tempos, what is the point?

Yup, or wind up with some nasty variant of RSI

The point of a metrnomoe is that it doesn't lose time; it maintains a constant equally paced beat to which you can play along to.

I have just one question:

How long do you practice now?

If its anything less then say 3 or 4 hours, the speed will come, but not as fast as you want it to. Your gonna start realizing that getting a better feel for the instrument and where the strings are under your hand has a huge effect on picking speed. The exercises just develop that but doing those exercises takes away from other things u could be doing. So to keep myself from going on, just seriously make up a run thats too difficult for you. Seriously do not even use your instrument to make it. Just sit down write it down, it can sound like shit, and just perfect it. Performing uncommon things on the guitar is the fastest way to. . .well get fast/good.

yeah, and also, you seem like ur def a beginner, and need some help in other areas before you worry how to get faster with the pick.

somthing that helps me is to try and sight read sheet music. not because many guitars cant read it. just its harder, and takes time to understand stuff, get fimiliar with key sigs, ect.. sight read songs that u never really have heard before. or just pick a song at random and see how much of it u can play after an hour or two. a thing that will help u become more fluent on guitar is just plug a chord in ur midi, and try and play a melody over it. then change it to another..ect rember scale patterns will give it a differnt mood.just try all sorts of crap.

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I'm not a beginner by any means. I've been playing for five years now (I started at fourteen). The other guy asking questions on this thread does sound like a beginner though. But like I said, I am not. It's just that I've never really been too interested in playing with a lot of speed. I mostly just played bluesy stuff, and I never tried much that was too fast for me. When I started to get into Pantera, I didn't even think about trying most of Dime's faster riffs, and especially his leads. But at this point I want to head in that direction. I'm not interested in playing death metal crazy-assed speed riffs. I am just not happy with where I am right now as far as speed is concerned.


Not enough, but more than I should. I'm in college and I have a bunch of shit going on that should take priority over the guitar at this point. But then, my guitar is right here by my desk, and I can't work on homework for more than an hour or so before I pick up the old axe and drift away for a few hours. For the most part, I want to play guitar more than anything else, but I have other shit to worry about. I'm on probation, and they're always on my ass if I mess up or start slumping in my grades.

i got 1 recommandation for you: Troy Stetina Speed Mechanics Book.

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a-fucking-men
i bought that book and it totally kicks ass

I love the book, but hes a sloppy guitar player i think.

I got the book off eBay and it came in today. Looks fucking sweet!

Here try this... It helped me a ton

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