What's up, got a lot of awesome help here last time I showed my ugly face, and I've got more questions. I did a search on this sort of thing and I didn't find any sort of results, so please forgive me if I've missed something.

Basically I'm looking to play lead (yeah yeah, everyone is) but my picking is, in short, shit. I can't play fast, my up/down picking is crap. When I try practicing slow and making it fast over time it all falls to pieces, I've been playing for maybe three months, so should I just stick with it or do you think there's anything I could be doing wrong?

Also, thanks a bunch for the help with palm muting, I've already got some crushing rhythm sounds out of my cheapass guitar and I'm loving it.

Stick with it!!!!

3 mo. isn't that long at all as far as developing speed. It took me 2 - 3 years to build up my alt picking speed and it's still slow.

__________________

Just keep playing as fast as you can without screwing up, eventually the speed of how fast you can play without screwing up will increase. Don't try to over do it.

__________________

Get a metronome or a program for your computer that can function as a metronome. I'm sure there's tons of free ones out there.

__________________

yea just stick with it. it all comes with time and practice.

Awesome. Thanks a lot for all the help. I know 3 months isn't long but I guess I'm just a little impatient.

Yes you are. However, when you finally get to the point that you can riff it away at 250 you'll also long since have understood why real guitarists snigger at the sight of ads saying "become a guitar god in exactly 30 days".
Now, to keep walking down the road of clichés, warm-up for the wrists and fingers is always a good start.

__________________

It's pretty good you return to ask questions etc, rather than just finding the forum to be a niche in which you live and waste time. Too many people seem to get hung up with forums etc, often deluded that increasing a post count is the way the guitar victory.

To generalise an answer, just practiceslowly, taking careto form the notes correctly, though both the left and right hand. Also when you're starting, be sure to work ongood technique of playing evenly; start at something like 16th notes to a tempo of 50bpm, making sure that not only are the up/downstrokes evenly spaced, but also that they are both creating a decent tone. A great analogy to this is the process of learning double basson a drumkit, whereby one leg is naturallyweaker, resulting in a shitter tone; this exists in the form of upstrokes generally.

As with everything though... Figure out what you can't do then work hard until you can. Formrealistic goals though, such as to increase the tempo by 5-10bpm over the duration of a week or so. If that seems stupidly hard or more likely stupidly easy, just use your intuition to set new goals. It's that mental capability many often overlook, and as a result spend hours ofwasted "practice" that offers little progression or development

Apologies for shit typing... Keyboard real fucked

Hey. Thanks again. I feel like I'm repeating myself here, haha, but what else can I say.

One day I'll be the one helping the newbies out!