1. Warm up first. Playing up to speed is just like running sprints. You wouldn’t come in from the cold and explode out of the starting blocks in a full sprint, expecting to perform a personal best. Rather, you’d warm up, shake it out, and work up to it. It’s the same with playing the guitar. You won’t achieve your full potential until you’ve warmed up your fingers—and to achieve maximum results, sometimes the instrument needs to warm up, too!

2. Play slow in order to play fast. If you’re having trouble, slow it down to a comfortable tempo and increase your pace gradually. You must play slow to play fast, a wise man once said.

3. Keep it light when you play for flight. In addition to not playing too slowly, try not to play too heavily. Bearing down on the guitar with more strength or effort than necessary is counterproductive. Fast passages are more often than not meant to be played lightly. Make sure your fingers remember that.

4. Speak clearly. Play the notes short and staccato to help them speak and to heighten the articulation effect.

5. Turn on your ears. Listen to the literature of the fast and the furious. Find pieces and passages that are similar in style, tempo, feel, and subdivide content according to your area of focus.

6. Listen to guitarists who play like you. Focus on the subtleties and nuances of their styles. If blues is your thing, a classic B.B. King flurry of single-note lines, or perhaps some of his patented vibrato, will reveal something new each time you listen.

7. Listen to guitarists who don’t play like you. This may contradict the previous tip, but sometimes you need to step outside of your environment to see the big picture. If you’re a player who tries to emulate the jazz stylings of Wes Montgomery, you may benefit by listening to picking prowess of Chet Atkins.

8. Don’t practice too slowly. Many guitarists get stuck in a rut simply because they’re playing at the wrong tempo. Most guitar teachers warn their students not to play too fast, so we have a tendency—when we want to “play seriously”—to slow down. However, sometimes you can play too slowly, meaning that you’re not playing the music at the intended performance tempo.

9. Establish a speed routine. When it comes time to work on your fretboard speed, know your routine exactly. For example, start with some two-octave scales, move to intervallic sequences, and then play various passages that will work your fingers in different ways. Finally, move to your “speed song”— a piece of music that you’d play if you were entering a contest for “The World’s Fastest Guitar Player.”

10. Get a metronome. If you don’t have one, buy one. Most are electronic and fit right in your case.

In Tune Monthly is the only magazine written exclusively for music making students in grades 7 - 12 and their teachers. Used by teachers as an in-classroom text, the magazine focuses on enriching and broadening the traditional music curriculum in middle and high schools and appeals to the independent player as well.

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