Misconceptions
of Practicing for Speed
By
Mike Philippov
It
is a fact that the majority of lead guitarists want to increase
the speed of their playing. Having virtuoso playing ability is
a wonderful way to add a new tool to your arsenal as a musician.
However this tool is also one of the most difficult to attain.
There have been many articles written on the topic and the most
common advice that is often heard is “practice slowly and
use a metronome.” Of course this is very good advice that
should definitely be followed. However, there are a great number
of struggling guitarists out there who use a metronome daily and
practice a lot, yet are still frustrated with their lack of progress.
Some of them decide that they don’t have talent to attain
such high level of ability and give up, while others continue
in hopes that one day their work will pay off. From my experience,
I feel that there is one very common misconception about practicing
for speed development and I will do my best to clear it up with
this article.
The
part where most people go wrong is in their THINKING. Most guitarists
assume that speed is something that can be attained DIRECTLY as
in: “I’m going to practice this lick for 20 minutes
and try to play it faster than I could before.” Even those
players who practice slowly and then try to increase their speed
using a metronome find that a lot of times this approach fails
to bring the results that they are looking for.
The
root of the problem is in the fact that players focus all of their
energy on the end result (being able to play fast) and this is
making them miss everything they need to see in order to achieve
it. I will explain what I mean.
The
problem is in the believing that speed comes directly as a result
of practicing. A much more effective way of thinking about it
would be to say that practicing should involve becoming familiar
with the MOTIONS required to play a certain phrase, and speed
will naturally develop as a result. Stop! Go back and re-read
the last sentence several times and THINK about it! After the
motions become smooth and well ingrained in the muscle memory,
they become so easy to execute then you don’t even have
to think about playing fast, the fingers just “do it themselves”.
A lot of players struggle with speed because their movements are
often imprecise and full of tension. Tension is a body’s
natural reaction to something it is not familiar with. When I
had a consultation on picking technique with Ney Mello he told
me that “simply trying to play fast is pointless, because
if you don’t know the motions, you are telling your hands
to speed up something that they have never even learned!”,
You may be wondering: what specifically should I be focusing on?
You can start by thinking about the left hand fingering, the picking
pattern, the motions of the right hand, and monitoring levels
of tension throughout the body. This very well may require you
to practice even slower than you probably ever have before with
a metronome. After you work these things out for the lick that
you are having trouble with, THEN you can pull out the metronome
and pay attention to keeping your technique the same as you did
when you were working out the correct physical motions of playing
it.
I
can see some students saying that using this approach would require
too much “unnecessary” focus and concentration on
something as “superficial” as technique. Well unfortunately,
there is no way around this. If you want to become a great player,
you have to put forth a lot of mental energy into mastering the
instrument on a physical level. Having great technique will enable
you to express your musical ideas exactly the way you hear them.
So concentration and mental focus is a price well worth paying
to acquire this ability. Also this approach to practicing should
be utilized anytime you are having trouble playing something and
not only to improve speed.
After
you feel like you really have a handle on the motions of playing
a lick at a super slow tempo you can pull out your metronome and
begin a slow work up through the tempos. If at any point you feel
that you’ve hit a plateau (you can’t move up past
a certain BPM marking for example), go back to the super slow
practice without the metronome and reinforce the correct movements
into the muscle memory.
This
is a VERY different mindset than simply trying over and over again
to push through the plateau in ability. The point is to get you
to THINK about what you are doing
What
I learned from experience was that speed was really a byproduct
of accuracy and consistency in learning the motions. After you
practice in this way for awhile you will notice that the passage
is becoming easier to play and you are able to play it faster
than before. Why did this happen? Because the motions are now
so well ingrained in your muscles and also because you took the
time to really pay attention to playing accurately using the most
efficient technique. Once again this a very different mindset
than sitting down and mindlessly playing the lick over and over
to the metronome. This approach may bring you limited results
in the beginning, but it will not bring you virtuoso levels of
technique.
So
the main point that I want you to take away from this article
is that when you sit down to practice something to the metronome,
make sure that you think about what you are doing. Pay attention
to the fingering and picking that you use. Depending on the phrase
you may want to use slightly different motions with the right
hand than you would for other things. This is important to notice
and it is important to practice something slow in the same way
that you are going to play it fast. This is what I mean when I
say that speed is a by product of accuracy and consistency. This
seems very obvious but a lot of players use different techniques
when the practice a lick at a slow speed and then try to play
it fast using different motions that their body hasn’t learned
yet! No wonder that the rate of progress has diminished.
So
I hope that you understand now that speed should not be a direct
goal of your practice, it will develop by itself if you take the
time to learn the motions that you use when you play guitar. Remember:
focusing on speed as a primary objective will make you miss everything
you need to achieve it. Good luck with your practicing and playing!
You can contact me at mikephilippov@yahoo.com
I would be happy to answer any questions you may have. I reply
to all e-mails.
Visit Mike’s sites:
www.enigmatheband.com
www.myspace.com/grimthesweeper
©2006 Mike Philippov All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.