THEY LIED About How To Play Faster and Shred? Does Martin Miller Have A Point? 

Back in the 80's and 90's, I was so obsessed with speed, I ran scales for hours every day - just trying to 'stubborn' my way to shred glory. Lol !!! But because I focused so much on speed, I didn't really have anything else in my bag of tricks. If the band played a slow blues, they'd get shreddy harmonic minor scales from me. If they played a ballad, they'd get shreddy harmonic minor scales from me. If I had played in a polka band, they would have gotten shreddy harmonic minor scales from me. Little flurries of speed are amazing, but only when they are tucked into beautiful melodic solos. Use speed as punctuation, not as the sentence.

I remember in John Pertrucci’s Rock Discipline DVD that he suggested pushing the metronome past your breaking point for a bit, and then setting the BPM back and all of a sudden the slower tempo feels easier to play even though you were struggling before. It totally helps!

Playing fast is incredibly hard and takes years and years of dedication. The only thing harder, I'm finding with my current band, is playing slow and sounding convincing, interesting, and authentic.

You and Martin Miller are both correct. And you point this out here too. You need to first slowly get something under your fingers. Once you do you should try playing it at speed because the motions are different. If there are mistakes you should back off slightly. Troy Grady teaches this too. And this approach has made me a much faster player at 45 than 25.

As far as age goes, I think it's a case of correlation, not causation. I made some pretty great speed gains as a teenager, but I was also able to sit and drill for 4 or 5 hours a day back then because I had so few responsibilities. I think that sort of time commitment isn't realistic for most adults. It requires nearly your entire life revolving around the instrument.

Some of the best advice I've received was to go learn a bunch of bluegrass songs. I've had my biggest gains in many years as a result. 1. There is no regularity to the string navigation, so you can't get locked into "notes per string" 2. Every note counts. Can't get away with grazing a string and it sounding close enough 3. A Martin with 13s makes an electric feel like child's play. I have also tried pushing tempos to where my head can no longer keep up. Well beyond the point of 100% or even 80% accuracy. Helps with processing. Also, with a little one here, too, who is learning to read, it has been fascinating to watch two aspects of development: 1) decoding or slowing processing to break down and learn basic and new words, and 2) chunking where combinations of letters are processed at once--more of an "at tempo" thing. Feels like there is an analogy for internalizing/memorizing vs getting it under your fingers with this.

I'm going to be 60 next month, and I can personally attest that John's assumptions about getting fast while young is probably true but really only due to the amount of free time kids have vs. having a spouse, kids, career, mortgage, etc. Although I've played acoustic (fingerstyle blues) and electric guitar for 40 years, I was never, ever very fast. Or accurate. Or clean. With a pick anyway. In 2022, I finally decided to take the time to learn how to play fast and clean, and this is what I learned (worked for me, YMMV): In my mind, there's playing fast, and then there's what I call warp speed, which John might call shredding. In my opinion, and I think John kinda said this too - those are 2 different techniques. I first changed the way I hold the pick, now my hand is more like a fist. I stopped manipulating the pick by moving my thumb and index finger; now use only my wrist, pronation and supination (thanks, Troy Grady). When I made the switch, I was so bad - my hands barely knew each other. I focused entirely on alternate picking at first (no hammer, no pull-off). It took me 6 months to get comfortable with the new technique - it took me that long to get back to mediocre again. I then used the "start slowly with a metronome and speed up, but stay accurate" method. That worked until I hit a speed roadblock, which I overcame with 2 alterations: 1. I lock my write and swivel at the elbow. 2. Chunking (thanks, German RU-vidr I can't remember his name) A few folks have said to stop worrying about being accurate and clean and just "go for it". For me, that was true. I was able to get fairly fast with the "start slow" method, but to shred I had to lock the elbow and learn in 2-3 note sequences. I absolutely sucked at it for a few months. And then suddenly I didn't. I literally went from "I'll never get this" to "holy crap, I can shred!" I can play significantly faster than the goal I set for myself when I started this journey. In the meantime, I brought hammers and pulloffs back into the mix. Also worked on hybrid picking, which for me was easier because I have a fingerstyle background (thanks Josh Smith). I made sure that every riff or lick I steal, um, learn, I learn it starting with a downstroke, and then learn it again starting with an upstroke (thanks Andy Wood). I am a work-in-progress on all of these techniques of course, but am significantly better at all of them as compared to my old technique. I just need to learn more licks. Total time, about 2 years, playing nearly every day anywhere from 5 or 10 minutes at a time (occasionally more). Now if I only knew the fretboard better...

I think some Guitar RU-vidrs, Troy Grady in particular, explain the bio-mechanics of how fast playing works, and why some mechanics work for some players and don't for others. There's a speed threshold where the biomechanics and right/left hand synchronization are fundamentally different from playing the same thing much slower. Literally different muscles and ranges of motion are being used in addition to the neuromuscular effort that is also different. This is where "starting slow" doesn't work. Yes, if you "chunk" you'll start slower, but it's bottom speed potential is still higher than that of not chunking. Case in point, there are many runs at high bpm where chunking is the only physical way to achieve the run.

I was sitting in an orchestra in 1966 when the sax player stood up and took a ten minute solo ( he wasn't breathing [circular]). I saw a woman over in the doorway and recognized her as the late Charlie Parkers' wife. That made me realize the guy next to me was Phil Woods ( makes sense because the orchestra leader was Oliver Nelson0. You Tube gives everyone the ability to sit real close (still not the same as being there) and see what the greatest musicians alive are doing. It you want to roast your weenies you have to go to where the fire is. And sometimes you over cook your weenies (burnt).My price of admission to sit next to people who play like that was ten hours a day practice and study for years and giving up everything else. Excellence in anything more often then not happens this way. Then go to the fire and temper your metal around the best or else you are going to burn your weenies.

My experience over 20 years in regards to fast alternate picking: 1. Learn and practice how to tremolo pick with your right hand. Get comfortable, relaxed and go fast 2. Alternate pick two notes at first fast as you can. Keep practicing this two-note ‘chunk’. 3. Expand the two-note chunk to three notes. 4. Do different combinations of ascending, descending, finger combos etc 5. Keep expanding the ‘chunks’ 6. Simultaneously learn the damn fretboard- patterns, scales, whatever. You need to have an ingrained mental roadmap in order to play fast instinctively 7. The whole ‘start slow and gradually increase BPM’ seems to be well-intentioned but not accurate. Often ppl who can play fast don’t actually remember or know how they did it. It ain’t starting slow and building up lol.

I started playing around 1976. I cut my teeth breaking down VH, Neal Schon, Blackmore, Page etc. Then the natural progression through the metal age- Rhodes, DeMartini and so on. I’m 61 and I just picked up a vintage RG 550 so I’m still shredding. During the lockdown I progressed as much as I had when I was a kid. This is my advice to aging players. Keep developing different finger independence exercises to keep the muscle memory flexible. Warm up longer to keep left hand fatigue at bay and third, take vitamin E and drink lots of magnesium water💧

"Start slow, like this:", then proceeds to melt faces with a C major scale... 😎

Just like many things, it's a blend of approaches that gets in done in the end. Come at from all angles. Perspective is everything.

There's this part if you're observant to your own playing, where you hit a spot where your technique either works, or it doesn't and you start to rethink your technique and see if you can make it easier and more relaxed because the tension is the enemy of speed. This is what I took away from watching the stuff that Troy put up, in particular the seminar he did with Andy Wood where he talks about his technique not working at some point and he changed it. Also speed bursts help. You're entirely correct about burning in things to muscle memory too, there is no way to do that other than repetition. Burning in good habits is what you want to do, so you're right there about accuracy. When it comes to the speed thing you want to try stuff and find what works first, and that requires experimentation, THEN burn it in.

Great video John - and fantastic playing!

Learning to absolutely eliminate tension is the key to unlocking speed.

I like to do a mix of both approaches: i set up a metronome to increase speed from comfortable to breaking point. However, when i notice that are parts of a phrase that are not clean, or articulate enough, i play that at a slower speed than the comfortable, for like 15 minutes. i found out that doing that helps with the speeding up exercises as well.

Back in the 80s I was fed up with all these new McAlpine 5000 mph guitarists .. At some point I was beginning to question if I was wrong .. but not for long - Being from the era of solo's I decided to trust my idols like Thin Lizzy (Sykes) etc. and to this day I still play my synth solo's from what comes up at a certain point .. thats it .. today I'm 61 and had a non-voluntary break for 30+ years after a parasite bite .. lately I started re-recording until I was hit by a massive stroke last year .. I'm not into fast, shred and want to tell youth that speed is not the goal, never been 🙂

The 'start slow' and speed up incrementally is a carry over from classical practice, so not likely to be abandoned. For guitar, with picking, I found a key was to sync my fretting hand with my picking hand and not vice versa. At slower speeds you can fret a note then pick it. At faster speeds you don't have time, so you need to be fretting and picking at a similar speed *but* not exactly syncronised. The fretting needs to be slightly ahead. So easier to aim for full sync, then fret slightly ahead. Theoretically you can play as fast as you can pick on a singles string, but then moving between strings, and fretting speed will slow that, but the better you get at moving between strings and fretting speed, the closer you get to the single string speed. Troy Brady had the best info on the subject last time I looked.

In the late 80s I had a cassette and booklet from MAB. His approach was to use tremolo picking at high speed to figure out the mechanics that worked for you and then keep those same mechanics as you built speed and accuracy up.

Interesting discussion! In Karate, we often shift focus. Sometimes, we practise slow, with emphasis on doing techniques perfectly, other times, we practise speed, and then accuracy goes out the window. The hope is that over time, we will get better at combining these concepts. For like you are alluding at, you use your hand, wrist, elbow and fingers differently pending on whether you go fast or slow. Not entirely obvious what is the best approach

One thing many speed exercises don't cover is switching note subdivisions in a single phrase/line. Practicing in 4/4 time, I like to mix up each beat in a measure to really give my hands/brain a workout. Say you play four sixteenth notes, an eighth note triplet, one eighth note and an eighth note rest, and then a sixteenth note triplet for one measure. This is what we know as phrasing, and it can be done with one note or many. Being able to articulately switch between these subdivisions at will, even within a single phrase, is how you develop your own voice/style musically. You can do so much rhythmically with one or two notes when mastering this. Don't be afraid to add rests into your phrasing either as it adds anticipation of what comes next as well as attitude. Shredders get a bad rap as a whole because the entry level largely play sixteenth note phrases fast and nothing else. If someone only plays fluid lines of sixteenth notes, it becomes boring to listeners quickly because there is no change or discernible theme. Freely switching between subdivisions is what we know and love as music regardless of tempo. Eric Johnson and Andy Timmons are great examples of really fast players who do this. Angus Young is my personal favorite example of this. Shredding capability is just one cool trick to have in one's full arsenal of tricks and need not be overdone. This is always my answer to the, "What advice would you give yourself 10 years ago about guitar playing," question. Don't always think what note should I play next. Give some thought to what subdivision should I play next. The note choices set the tonality/mood of a piece, the rhythmic subdivisions convey the attitude/feel of the artist. Edit: I realize this comment could appear like I'm talking about/to John, but I wasn't. Just was the most helpful things I've learned in my 15 years of playing.

I think part of the starting slow and gradually building up is primarily needed to avoid excess tension in your wrist and/or fingers. Since our muscles work in opposing pairs (biceps curl arms inward, triceps push arms back out), excess tension in any parts of your body that you’re trying to move really slows you down since your body is literally fighting against itself. Of course, some tension is needed or you’d drop your pick, your guitar and maybe even fall out of your chair if you’re sitting or collapse if you’re standing. So, I guess it’s all about finding the smallest amount of tension you can.

Attention to detail (ie how to play clean) and intentional practice are key. Identify exactly what you want to work on to not waste time. You gotta push yourself to develop the strength and stamina...No pain, no gain within reason. Be mindful of your body's muscle tension while practicing.

Hey man! Great video! Are the tabs/backtrack for the piece you played at the start of the video on your Patreon? It was such a killer piece of music!!

My feeing is a metronome should be there to help you with rhythmic precision. It’s not a speedometer. Use a metronome to work on accuracy first. Then you can worry about tempo. As you said, with guitar there are numerous fingerings you’re often trying to gain muscle memory for. I don’t know what the other guys you mentioned said, but yes, everyone learns to run just by running one day, but no one runs at an Olympic level without training, and sometimes that training isn’t running, but working on the muscle memory of things like length of your stride, how high are you knees, learning how to break out of starting blocks. All of that is analogous to the techniques of guitar playing and building speed. But speed really only comes from the accuracy of your technique.

The “youth advantage” is overstated imho. I did learn the majority of my technical competence in my early teens, but I improved immensely much later. Accurate picking speed came in my 30s. In fact, I was a far faster and more accurate picker in my late 40s. My left hand legato was faster in my late teens, early 20s. I have a permanent finger injury now, so I have to budget the 16th/32nd notes, but I’m a more accurate picker now when I do. I actually think age has very little to do with progression except when it comes to confidence. Older students are less confident, therefore less likely to push through.

The elephant in the room is that a lot of shredders are incredibly sloppy rhythm-wise. Fwiw, I asked a classically trained pianist known for their technical ability whether they'd ever practice sloppy and tidy it up later for speed. They said they have techniques for building speed but would never practice sloppily.

I learnt to play fast in my 30-40s now playing flight of bumble bee at 180 bpm! Started slow and accurate for a few weeks then whacked up the tempo. But have done years of exercises and metronome work.

ime start slow and build up works better for the fretting hand and chunking works better for the picking hand

WHen I was younger, I would just GO FOR IT! It worked surprisingly well. I would just back off a bit until it got cleaner and then push back at full speed. Many licks I can play at full speed and cannot play them any slower!! Something about the way it just feels and the way the muscles work.

Thanks. Great playing. Can't keep my eyes off that K-Line Del Mar...

sick af playing bro some great melodic shred there

Nice! What major scale do you play there up and down the neck? Stil having problems with seeing the mayor scale on my fretboard.

open loop! 🎉

One things i haven't seen many people talk about is why and how working slowly can be beneficial to reach higher speed. First off, lemme just say that i'am a very particular case, i've had a lot of nerve/cardio-vascular problem over the years and had to undergo surgery twice due to a thoracic outlet syndroma ( on both arms, feel free to check that out ). I played guitar all my life, and i'am now 38 yo, and after one of the surgery i had to entirely stop playing for 5 years due to the fact my left hand was extremly weak, i had lost quit a bit of motricity, i had no strenght, nor stamina left in my arm, and what i could manage was about 15 min of guitar playing on my best days, while still experiencing pain. I got back into it, after a few years when my hands got better, but i never really came back from it 100%, my 4th finger/pinky are still very weak and have problem coordination wise. I was quit the shredder in my youth, but i had to start again from 0, all my life teacher told me to work slowly but i really never understood why, outside of the fact you'll have to do so in order to "work your way up" , and that's true, to some extent, but once i couldn't play like i did before i started working extremely slow to help my weak fingers to get better, and threw hard work and decication i realised many things about working slow : > Working slow isn't only about working your speed up or correcting mistake, but also about working on your form and efficiency. For my weak fingers to be able to come back from all those problem i had to spend the least amount of movement, and try to be the most confortable i could in order to achieve speed again. > Working really slow allows you to perfect your form, and be meticulous about details you wouldn't normally pay attention to, and also helps your brain memorise better. When i talk about efficiency, it can be many things, > The space between the strings and your finger ( the distance they travel when changing strings, for exemple ) > How much movement do you waste on your picking hand, and how to improve that. > Most of the time ( and i've seen that with a lot of guitarist ), the problem isn't the neck hand, but the picking hand ( myself included ), as we start our guitar journey we tend to focus a lot on the neck hand and don't pay much attention to the other hand, while it is in fact, the one hand that needs the most work in lot of cases. Working extremly slow allowed me to understand i had many flaws in my picking hand game and allowed me to perfect my movement that i am now able to execute with next to no strain in my forearm/shoulder. I used to be tense uppon extended period of time because i had a lot of unpolished movement, and the only way to correct those micro mistake is to become aware of it, playing slow helps a lot with that. Same for the left hand, i had to correct years of habbit ( fingers doing a lot of unwanted movement, trying to be the most efficient i could ) I realise my comment already is hella long so i'am not gonna extend too much. But all that work made me realise how complacent i had been with the instrument over the years, specifically my right hand, and the quality of my picking. It's been a decade now, and my hands feel much better now, i still have some limitation, but i can play smoke and mirrors again. So if I, can do it, anybody can, it's all about being honnest about what you lack as a guitarist, and how smart you can be about the way you work on your weaknesses.

If you cant do it slow then you cant do it fast. If you cant walk you cant run. So you have to walk first. Thats why starting slow is a requirement. Once get that down the gradual increase on speed isnt the best tactic. I found speed bursts are the way to get faster.

The most difficult things for me with playing guitar are patience and discipline.

I started playing at 11 in 1981 and i remember seeing motley Crue show and after that i wanted to play fast as i could but my right hand and left were never so coordinated for years. I spent wasted time going about it wrong but at least i kept at it. Taking classical guitar lessons when i was 30 really improved my skill level. It was the breakthrough i needed to take my playing ro the next level. Now i spend most of.my time fingerpicking instead of using a pick and i can play almost as fast and clean as that Italian kid Mancuso. And when i do use a pick, Dunlop jazz III are most precise, i can really shred like Yngwie and petrucci. The point is, take classical or finger style lessons and you will make dramatic improvements on your speed as well as overall technique

Fast forward into your 60's & reverse the problem. I was a fast accurate player, then I got Parkinson's. There are no words to describe how it feels to close your eyes, feel that fast mixolydian move & find your hand completely unresponsive to the instruction to execute it.

I'd say that a slow pace is best for memorization, choosing efficient finger positions, transitions and picking directions/type. A steady pace is good for good ingraining the memorised notes in your muscle memory and synchronising the left and right hand. Chunking is good for increasing the left, right or both hands speed whilst trying to maintain synchronisation. Whenever I try to learn something, I've found it's best to do this over multiple days and in short sessions, than in one sitting. There have been countless times I could not play something as well as I want, only to get frustrated and quit. But later, after having a good night of sleep, I wake up and suddenly I can play it. How do you expect your hands to keep up to speed if your brain cannot even memorise what to do properly? Muscle memory is also built over time and can only take place when you have memorised the parts. I bet if you search well enough you must find some science to back this up.

I can make a long story on this one.But the thing is if you do this and it's not working then you have to study pickslanting And the doors will be open forever.And everything makes sense. cheers all the best

John, what is that strap you're using?

Great lesson and insights. Your picking hand is incredibly smooth and your pinky is as long as my index finger 😅 so I’ve always had to work around not having a huge reach. I played a lot in my teens but only recently picked it back up in my 50s. Obviously I’m not as fast. Also a lifetime of work and sports, broken fingers, have affected my play. It’s more about accuracy and tone for me now.

"Yngwie Malmsteen for instance seems to be a very relaxed guy......with his picking I mean" 🤣

Your guitar tone on here is nuts!

Anton Oparin is the only youtuber I pay any attention to regarding technique because 1) he has the best technique I've ever seen and it's not even close and 2) he bases his ideas of solid anatomical understanding rather than broscience. I like Troy but his channel is really about learning to imitate the techniques of decent players, rather than trying to isolate what is the optimal way to play guitar.

The thing with this is that people wrongly think playing fast, playing accurately and learning a song are the same skill when i reality everything should be practiced individualy.

started playing at 16 in the mid 70's. Played and gigged for about 10 years. Had to pack it in, I had a mortgage, wife, child and was working shifts for 30 years. Picked up the guitar again at about 60 years of age, never used a metronome except in school.

Good points! Why is it that your low strings sounding so flubby and compressed? To me it sounds like the action is to low, which results in frett buzz and compressed notes with not enough sustain.

What did Marin Miller say? Is there a link to watch it?

You get a ‘Like’ for the impressive arm veins mate. Stimulated veins is a good sign of having a good work out. Get that blood flowing. Enjoy your videos as always. Cheers! 🍻

I greatly prefer these musical sounding exercises rather than non-musical chromatic "spider" exercises. And even though I'm 73 and have never had a goal of being a shredder, this type of exercise sounds great at the slower speeds that I play.

Love to play fast form time to time, maybe is my adrenaline. I was guitar nerd with videos of Lane, Cooley, Becker, Holdsworth, etc. But now I'm more on jazz standars, but still love both sides. I think the best intructional if you wanna be a faster player was Shred Guitar manifesto by Rusty Cooley. Obiously on a technical aspect (legato, picking, tapping)

"... not just a random kid".... laughed way too hard ;)

Just from sports perspective. There's a difference in fast- vs slow-twitch fibres across individuals and certain learning curve resulting from that (and the level of achievement resulting from that). The second thing is fascia and how it tends to stiffen as the years go by. That being said, accoracy and speed are to certain extent different skills, that should be trained separately, with different drills, and then merged gracefully. One without the other gets messy and limiting over time.

Definitely start slow!

There's benefit and drawbacks to both approaches.

I have gone round and round and round both online and in direct conversations with other players about speed. Having learned my first cowboy chords preteen, hanging the guitar up until my 40s...just pulling it off the shelf every now and again in my teens, 20s and 30s...I definitely feel the time for speed is past. I'm almost 50 and have been hammering away daily trying to play even what most "fast players" would consider moderate tempo to no avail. I've used the ramping metronomes on YT to no avail. It's not just about time spent, as some others have suggested....over the course of the past 7 years I have averaged 2 hours a day with a guitar in my hand and about 1/2 of that in actual focused metronome effort to synchronize and speed up. W/O malicious intent, people selling speed, either in lessons or gear, prey upon people like me. An example I have is hammering away an hour daily for 2 months on Creeping Death's verse riff trying to get it to 202 using a long ramping metronome, looking away from the time and watching my speed fail day after day after day at the same time in the video. Many players would suggest I haven't practiced enough...I believe most players don't have the tenacity to fail at something as epically as I have at guitar and still keep at it.

You start to practice making mistakes - you get very good at it.

You're right about newer players wanting to play too fast too soon and getting frustrated. That's not such a bad thing, as a properly motivated player will find the ways. The other type of newer player that is more problematic, though, is the one who tries to do the same and is oblivious to what they sound like doing it. Working on feel and accuracy is of utmost importance when ramping speed. I do adhere to the same train of thought as cats like Andy Wood and John Petrucci, though. Floor it. Pedal to the metal for a take or two and get a grasp of what that feels like to see not only the potential, but where problem areas may lie. Then back it off a bit from there to hone in on fixing flaws. It also makes previously impossible speeds not seem so bad. Anyway, good video concept.

I want to play fast. Because it's necessary for the kind of music I want to play. Golden era 80/90s metal. Feel and note value are more important, but you don't get through the qualifiers without also having the speed. I've practiced quite a lot. But I'm 40 this year, have two kids so I'm not drilling these execises all day. But I know what it is to drill. For what it's worth, here's what I've learned. Guthrie Govan is right (about everything). If you can play something very precisely and efficiently, then speeding it up isn't necessarily that hard. A lot of times I've thought 'bah, I can't play this fast'. Then slowed it down a bit, and realised, actually, I just can't REALLY play it well. So slow it right down, work out every nuance, then start speeding it up. But.. you can't train for the sprint, by practicing running marathons. You can't walk all day, and just assume that because you've made so many steps, you'll be great at running. There is value in pushing the tempo beyond what you can play comfortably, and just trying to hang on. You need to do both. Fast and sloppy sounds terrible. I realised that the phrases I wanted to play are like phrases in language. They contain information that we're trying to convey to the listener. If bits of information are missing, dead notes etc.. or it goes off the beat, you lose the listeners engagement. Master of puppets at 180bpm played well sounds better than master of puppets at 200bpm played badly. The slow playing technique is just different to the high speed. And I found there's a shifting 'awkward' bpm range where you're not quite sure which one you're doing. Initially for me, it was 110bpm. I could play at 100 and weirdly at 120, though it felt really fast, but I just literally couldn't play at 110. Final point. It's not all right hand. It's all hand sync. The minute details of timing, muting and pressure. I realised what makes the good guys good, is that the notes are fast, but clear and legato. No dead space. And that's hard to do.

Is that a San Bernadino K-Line with SSS? Or a different model

I see your picking technique changes the faster you go and whether you are alternate picking, rake picking or using legato. The faster you play, the less the picking motion is in the wrist and the more it is in your arm. Its that transition as you speed up the tempo that is difficult as what work slower doesn't necessarily work faster.

I can play pretty fast using hammer ons and pull offs, but my alternate picking is only moderately fast. I loose the synchronization when my right goes fast. My left hand is pretty fast too but my brain totally goes caput when i try alternate picking at a higher speed. I'm 64 and a regularly gigging lead guitarist. I still believe some how some day I'll get fast.

That guitar is a beauty 😍

You have to learn the moves and the feeling of playing fast. After that it's like riding a bike. Daily speed work helps too. By moves I mean can you play all hammer-on legato, but then add in a very, very slight amount of pull-off...almost none...this type of motion sensitivity is what we need to be gaining awareness of, not just practicing the same way over and over, but trying different subtle motion variations...find what works and repeat for a few weeks. Then learn with slightly different motion variations. Like Inner Skiing or Inner Tennis. Life is a game.

I’m 40 this year… I’d love to be able to play fast and clean. Tell it can be done, John. Tell me! 😂😂😂

Bounce by Mathew Syed and The talent code ar books that set out what we currently know about how the physiology of learning works. From which you can experiment and find your own way. Troy Grady’s stuff is good too. Lots of others here have summed it up well, but one key element is Called ‘reaching’. Which is you must do the skill faster than you can. Else your body will happily stay where it is. My final thought. Technique serves expression.

As soon as I start thinking what my right hand is actually doing I mess it up, I always feel my picking hand is connected to my fretting hand naturally. If I concentrate on that 9/10 times my picking hand is accurate at speed. I play more traditional rock stuff so I don't class my playing style as a shredder.

"...with his picking, I mean." 🤣

If you practice slowly with a mind to speeding up, you NEED to understand picking strategy. I gained most of my speed recently when I shifted focus from speed to picking efficiency. Speed was a byproduct of this focus. You can't go wrong with a bit of Troy Grady and "cracking the code."

I think you should play soow ONLY to internalize the rhythm, then push the tempo to 160-190 like Shawn Lane would.

I'm a faster player at 51 than I was in my 20's. But I've now spent the time just sitting there running scales and 3 note per string licks. I think it just depends on when in your life that became important and you just sat there putting in that work. Obviously the longer you've played the more you can see the fretboard so it would make sense you get more accurate later.

Shawn Lane talked about this back in 1993

Yes; the guys who say you don’t get better at running by walking already put in hours memorizing patterns and they’re trying to go from 16th notes at 200 bpm to 210 bpm. Once you are familiar with lots of patterns you can “learn” new ones at faster starting speeds. I’m a shite guitar player; I know all this from practicing the tuba…

I never started playing until I was 24 LOL, and now I am 55. Still not managed to play really fast.

The nervous system can't adapt to a stimulus it has yet to meet.

This is only one kind of speed. I'm more focused on playing like Johnny Ramone, but yeah, when I'm working something out I will slow it down to get it, but I sometimes find the sloppiness is part of what makes the riff.

Check out Jon Bjork where he talks absolutt transition times. The movements need to be fast and precise when you’re practicising slow.

Nice discussion. But music is about taste, isn't it? Shred is a booster, but melody is a statement. My point is, what comfort you, just do it. But don't forget, music is a piece of art. Not a piece of sport.

Young players have more free time and have less bad habits built in to their technique (and are less stubborn about changing them). Aging players like me have to really be diligent with devoting specific time blocks to metronome practice, and have to be willing to step backward to make technique adjustments where bad habits limit speed

Speed is cool (had you listen Coltrane's 'sheets of sound'), but I prefer 'melodic freedom' over finger/muscular memory speedy patterns, ok, they are fun to play and one can build pattern sequences in a 'freely way' like Steve Morse did or Paul Gilbert showed, ... but a better example of 'melodic freedom' could be Scott Henderson, inclusive, Frank Gambale , John Scofield, there is a girl in youtube called Tori Slusher, she is a beast in having melodic freedom while using intricate plucking patterns ... Of course, I am not at that level crafmantshift ... but what I found useful to grasp that is to center my accuracy routines in just the transitions between strings (with just pick, or pick and fingers, or just fingers) and applying combinatory rithmic patterns alternating left hand fingering ... then, two kind of exercises, dumb exercises for made while watching TV or Anything else that don't means that I am playing guitar ... and 'real exercises' that are musical phrases that got a plucking pattern and can betransposed all over the fretboard and/or scale intervals, the 'real exercises' I don´t play as running a pattern, instead , as melodic performance line with dynamics. accents nuances ... very slow, and bringing rhythmic displacements ... these form of practice comes from Michael Brecker ... and he called that something like 'subconcious food' , a thing that you do while practicing but never think to do that as you did in a performance ... soon or later, after years of practice, those 'ideas' begins to merge spontaneously and without thinking in your improvisations ... Yes, that is not getting a fast lick an impressing people with that or repeating a composition that brings you a reward to play as you want it to be ... but getting into that zone when/where the playing is like jumping into the unknown and trying to get something 'something' in the moment and get the luck to get into a musical flow that means something for the ensemble and surprise yourself because you are not playing preplanned lines, instead, what the subconscious flows is bringing to your 'body/hands/fingers' is something(composing in real time) that I enjoy more that playing a picking pattern at the speed of light ... ... and I think that 'melodic freedom' is way more difficult to achieve than speed of light picking patterns ...

I spent my youth skateboarding and shredding too 😂

As others have said Troy Grady has the definitive, revolutionary material on this, and picking in general. Miller did a long interview with him. Andy Wood says the same thing. I'm not interested in shredding but picking issues are definitely a thing of the past. Still, many pedagogues will continue to recommend "starting slow" and misleading learners. It will probably take a few more years, until a few more Troys, Martins and Andys have emerged, for the old notions to go away.

My theory, exactly. Starting slow and working up will never work up. Start normal speed. It will work itself out in the wash.

Coming from a classical perspective, I was taught to only play something as fast as you can manage without making mistakes. Once you master it at a particular speed, ramp it up a notch. Also, taking a break from playing is crucial to becoming more proficient.

❤Thin Lizzy❤. Let's speak about Gorham licks and style. He's so melodic.

Why on earth was my comment about Shaun Baxter deleted?

I don't think MM is correct because a common trait of beginner guitarists (myself included) especially at the time when there was no internet to see a ton of footage of not just virtuoso players but other learners uploading to youtube was to try and skip straight from I can play smoke on the water to thinking you were going to be able to play Yngwie lines or Steve Vai or whoever was on the front cover of the various guitar magazines. So if that worked - if you could play fast by simply just trying to do it, we'd have all been on the cover of the magazines ourselves. What actually happens is you just suck because you're trying to run before you can walk. You need to develop a sound technique for playing notes and that will be developed by playing slowly and carefully considering both what it feels like (relaxed etc) and, most importantly, what it sounds like. And then, yes, playing faster isn't really "just speeding up slow playing" Martin is right there, but neither is it trying to play faster than you can, getting uncoordinated and expecting it to just fix itself if you keep doing that because of some magic that happens automatically in your brain. Secondly there's specifically a difference between playing fast notes and playing specific fast notes. Generally you want to know a piece so you're not thinking about what to play before you play it fast. At which point everything about improving the piece is an exercise of listening rather than worrying about what your fingers or arms are doing (excepting the one precept - it should feel relaxed - if you're feeling pain, fatigue, tension or struggling then you need to find a way of playing without using effort and getting tense) As for playing fast when you're older, unless you're over 75 that shouldn't be an issue. As for players who say they used to play much faster when they were younger - chances are it sounded terrible and given that the role of 'sounds terrible and plays fast' was already occupied by the tubby Swede you realised you'd be better off playing more musically rather than because you're getting on a bit and can't play faster. Maybe if you now try to play faster you have a more critical ear of what it sounds and feels like so you think "I can't play as fast as I used to" - it's probably just that in the past you were happy with the resulting noise and now you're not so you think "My fast playing isn't very clean now" - that said Yngwie ran into a tree in a car (or something) and that's (one of the many reasons) his playing sucks today compared with right when he started. I can play faster than I ever have if I wanted to and I'm the wrong side of 50. Mostly because I realise now, far more than I did as a teen what to do to play fast - or more importantly what not to do - and thus my playing is far more relaxed and controlled, movement is minimized and speed then becomes as easy as playing slowly. In fact playing expressively, bending strings this is what is difficult to do well without getting tension in your playing - the very nature of bending the string is the antithesis of using minimum effort and I spend much more time worrying about how to improve bending strings than I need to spend worrying about how to play notes quickly. It's like if you wanted to learn a Yngwie lick there's just one challenge : can you play the notes from harmonic minor scale fast enough - there's really little or no quality you can add to notes being played that fast for anyone to hear or you to get wrong. So if your left and right hand are coordinated and you play the right notes at the right time, that's more or less it. Whereas if you try to learn, say, the solo to comfortably numb or the melody of For the love of god, well now there's so much more that can go wrong. Each note has a quality to it. Many beginners try to play these and all they manage is hitting the right pitch at roughly the right time it still sounds bad because there's so much more to getting the performance right. As for playing with a metronome you should always reference and listen to the other people or things you're playing with. Otherwise it will sound bad. i.e if when you solo you close your eyes and just listen to yourself it'll suck. You have to listen to the bass and drums - in that sense, if you don't have a drummer / bass player or a backing track then you should either be stomping your foot Paul Gilbert style or have a metronome (but given how easy it is to get a DAW and build a groove metronomes are a bit old hat - create a backing that sounds good - and listen to it while you play not the least a bass or other parts will add harmony and solos without that sound bad) Don't rely on some inner sense of time or kid yourself that by not using a metronome you'll develop one, because that will suck - go and watch Chapman et al playing on Andertons and see how much they all suck playing notes without any reference - fast or slow it's just crap. It improves a bit when one of them is playing a bit of rhythm. That's how your playing will be if you practise without a backing or some external reference - as I say Paul Gilbert stomps his foot - but if you want to be in a band and play with other musicians and have it sound good then you need to listen to them so you may as well use a DAW. Gilbert learned to play back before looper pedals and DAWs, so he stomped his foot, maybe he used a metronome, but we have much better technology to create a backing now. Definitely don't close your eyes and start playing notes based on muscle memory or your fave licks - if you do that your notes will go out of time and the whole thing will suck because the drummer is not synced to your internal clock - even if your internal clock is in time (it most likely won't be). It's like when Vai joined Zappa and Zappa told him he had to learn to play in the pocket, in the groove - you have to learn how to do that and it's like when I play my guitar I'm playing the drums perceptually, I hit a note and the snare makes a noise and the snare makes your guitar note feel super strong - it's like when you play Doom on the PC and all you do is press a little mouse button, but the big shotgun sound that triggers makes it feel like the weapon is strong and has weight etc - well that's what the sound of the drums does to my guitar notes if I listen to the drums - and the bass, if your bass player is good then he makes your guitar sound brilliant - most of the audience, even the guitar player, think they can't hear the bass (that's why so many beginner guitarists get their tone wrong because they think their riffs aren't as heavy as the record but that's because there's no bass player in their bedroom - but they try to fix it by adding bass to the guitar, more gain etc. Obviously every note doesn't land on a beat, but to syncopate I'm listening for the snare or kick and then playing a note.

Jason Becker said to start off fast too.

The key to speed is practicing with the metronome, chunking, having individual practice for both hands and practicing all key paces from slow to medium to fast. One of most people's mistakes is spending too much time practicing slowly. You should spend equal time in all paces which means you would be practicing more notes in the medium pace than in the slow pace and more notes in the fast pace than in the medium pace. Another mistake is not knowing which hand is less developed. My personal problem was that my picking hand was underdeveloped since I loved playing legato lines. Personally, legato is too soft for real shredding.

I think melodic playing is more important than shredding. Case in point: David Gilmour

Andy Wood said a very similar thing.

I think either you have fast twitch or not, then it's just up to putting in a few reps. My kid basically started playing segovia and polyphia this past year after actually practicing a few hours a day for 4-6 months. It's insane; however, enter genetics. My mom was a professional typist, I am a professional Tech guy, and also type like the wind and don't find many guitar parts that hard if I want to put in the time. We are Also related to Elvis, so there's that. Fortunate I suppose. But just know there are freaks out there. Part of what motivated me when I was young is that there was a 16 year old kid Just around the block who could play all the rhythm and leads from Megadeth's Rust in peace. I figured if he could do it at 16, then it was possible. I wasn't quite sure at the time of the advantage I had.

Reverb on the metronome makes it way for digest for the ear lol

When I see people saying " Most shredders...blah blah blah" I know they know nothing about playing fast with accuracy and fluidity. If you cant count it you cant play it. There is no avoiding the metronome if you want fluidity and accuracy. Bad advice is bad this aint yer wheelhouse.

I've been saying "if it's not played with the fuzzface on 10 it's a boldfaced lie" for years.

at the start of your conversation at 6:55 showing the 3 notes per string you seem to be picking only once per string and using a legato technique to get the second and third notes to sound out yes? I assume without heavy sustain/distortion the notes would not sound out as clearly as yours do? BTW I'm 64 been playing classic rock-blues since 1977 and still have never been a speedy player I just cant seem to get the technique down . I use alternate picking every single note just seem to fumble and bumble when trying to go quickly as the metronome4 techniques where nerve shown to me b ack in the day it was mostly find a book on soloing and here's a blues box pattern and have at it

I’d prefer Eric Clapton to answer this question… 😉 Let the right hand do only half of the work. Left hand, hammer on, pull off. Nice sellotape. 😬