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speed
- Thread starter misterCRUSH
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I'm sure many others will chime in with specific advice about drills, using a metronome, and so forth, but I'll start by making a couple of different points.
You have a profile post that says, "They told me practice makes perfect. then they told me nobody's perfect. So I stopped practicing." Pretty good joke, but here's what's wrong with it: The correct advice is that "Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect." Which is to say, never try to practice faster than you are capable of doing without errors; otherwise you're just practicing making errors. Patience. Speed will come with practice.
It also appear from your profile that you've been playing a while; you're no beginner. If you've just recently become serious about trying to increase your speed, I suggest that you first take a good, critical look at your technique. Any bad habits you might have developed over the years might be limiting your ability to increase speed, so now would be a good time to take a serious, critical look at your technique to see if any changes are necessary to be able to play faster (accurately).
You have a profile post that says, "They told me practice makes perfect. then they told me nobody's perfect. So I stopped practicing." Pretty good joke, but here's what's wrong with it: The correct advice is that "Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect." Which is to say, never try to practice faster than you are capable of doing without errors; otherwise you're just practicing making errors. Patience. Speed will come with practice.
It also appear from your profile that you've been playing a while; you're no beginner. If you've just recently become serious about trying to increase your speed, I suggest that you first take a good, critical look at your technique. Any bad habits you might have developed over the years might be limiting your ability to increase speed, so now would be a good time to take a serious, critical look at your technique to see if any changes are necessary to be able to play faster (accurately).
Start slow and speed up over time.
Even as a kid I was never a "speed" player. Rocco Prestia type fast was a skill that always eluded me.
Luckily I've never been in a band that required me to play like that.
Even as a kid I was never a "speed" player. Rocco Prestia type fast was a skill that always eluded me.
Luckily I've never been in a band that required me to play like that.
Practicising slow is way too simplistic. For me you need to practice with accuracy and clarity and with intent. I make those the main aim of my practice and mix in stamina and speed as additional work items.
This has a click bait title but the content can give suggestions on how to build speed but again focusing on keeping accuracy and clarity:
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SBL has a number of videos on speed bursts -
And another which emphasises practicing with intent and trying to identify what is "slow" -
This has a click bait title but the content can give suggestions on how to build speed but again focusing on keeping accuracy and clarity:
-
SBL has a number of videos on speed bursts -
And another which emphasises practicing with intent and trying to identify what is "slow" -
super-speed guitar player michael angelo batio said "you've got to play slow to learn to play fast".
years ago, i wanted to play faster. i was fast, but i wanted to play fast punk and death metal. i found the more i played at the fastest speed where i could play everything about a song correctly, i naturally increased my speed. i didn't try to play faster than i could on the tunes i practiced, as it was a great way to learn everything wrong or get frustrated. and i did end up getting up to the speed i wanted with no other exercises or practice methods - just playing the songs i wanted to play fast at the best speed i could.
one other thing - i find playing songs or riffs you know means you don't have to spend milliseconds figuring out what comes next. muscle memory is a beautiful thing.
years ago, i wanted to play faster. i was fast, but i wanted to play fast punk and death metal. i found the more i played at the fastest speed where i could play everything about a song correctly, i naturally increased my speed. i didn't try to play faster than i could on the tunes i practiced, as it was a great way to learn everything wrong or get frustrated. and i did end up getting up to the speed i wanted with no other exercises or practice methods - just playing the songs i wanted to play fast at the best speed i could.
one other thing - i find playing songs or riffs you know means you don't have to spend milliseconds figuring out what comes next. muscle memory is a beautiful thing.
I agree with the other posters: practicing slow, focusing on perfectly clean technique, and developing accuracy help a lot.
I'll also add that knowing your instrument, and expanding your muscle memory, makes a HUGE difference! It doesn't matter how fast your fingers can move if your brain is trying to remember the note, key, scale, etc. Great fluid players look effortless because they are not thinking about that stuff, so all their energy can be devoted to technical perfection and clarity. This means drilling things like scales, shifts, and arpeggios until your hands can do them without your brain. It also means knowing your fretboard up, down, and sideways so you never have to pause to find the right note or locate where you want to go next.
As for muscle memory, it's training all your fingers. Anthony Wellington's left-hand permutations exercise is a great starter. You may be used to playing with your fingers in order: 1234 or 4321. But how often do you play more unusual fingering sequences, like 3241? What if you spread those out across multiple strings or even positions? The same goes for the right hand, being able to use any technique without having to line it up or double check proper efficiency (IE alternating plucking fingers) adds to your speed as well.
Lastly, you need cool ideas to play fast. Unless you intend to pedal one note, you may as well learn some cool stuff to actually do with your speed. That might mean transcribing solos, learning fast lines/melodies, or diving into more technical songs to figure out how fast players get their notes to come out. Even if you don't want to sound like Vic or Marcus or Stanley you should still know how they achieve their speed and fluidity.
Start slow, play clean, play efficiently, and only increase the tempo once all those other elements are perfect.
I'll also add that knowing your instrument, and expanding your muscle memory, makes a HUGE difference! It doesn't matter how fast your fingers can move if your brain is trying to remember the note, key, scale, etc. Great fluid players look effortless because they are not thinking about that stuff, so all their energy can be devoted to technical perfection and clarity. This means drilling things like scales, shifts, and arpeggios until your hands can do them without your brain. It also means knowing your fretboard up, down, and sideways so you never have to pause to find the right note or locate where you want to go next.
As for muscle memory, it's training all your fingers. Anthony Wellington's left-hand permutations exercise is a great starter. You may be used to playing with your fingers in order: 1234 or 4321. But how often do you play more unusual fingering sequences, like 3241? What if you spread those out across multiple strings or even positions? The same goes for the right hand, being able to use any technique without having to line it up or double check proper efficiency (IE alternating plucking fingers) adds to your speed as well.
Lastly, you need cool ideas to play fast. Unless you intend to pedal one note, you may as well learn some cool stuff to actually do with your speed. That might mean transcribing solos, learning fast lines/melodies, or diving into more technical songs to figure out how fast players get their notes to come out. Even if you don't want to sound like Vic or Marcus or Stanley you should still know how they achieve their speed and fluidity.
Start slow, play clean, play efficiently, and only increase the tempo once all those other elements are perfect.
Thank you for that! I have been working on Donna Lee, VERY slowly. I know it will be a long process but I'm committed to it. I have learned the fretboard, and drill scales and arpeggios daily, often several times. Thank you for your comments!!
Given that you're doing on a fretless is another challenge. For that specific application, working on scales and arpeggios is helpful, but having the muscle memory and perfect intonation to make the transitions to different positions would also be really helpful for increasing your speed. A favorite thing of mine is to do arpeggios through a bunch of different scales and play those up and down the neck.
With complex pieces of music, I find I have work slowly at first to just make sure I get the flow and transitions of it down, once I start getting those down, I can usually start dialing the speed up pretty fast.
For metal, in particular, I'll frequently focus my practice on the transitions between riffs/sections in order to get the muscle memory down and make it flow well.
Where are the speed problems that you're having? Are they when you're switching left hand positions? Maintaining intonation? Keeping consistent attack/right hand technique?
Thank you for those ideas! My intonation is pretty solid; I struggle most with shifting positions and consistent plucking using alternate fingers. I'm getting better with alternating my fingers, as thats one of the things I have really been focusing on in my exercises and practice.
For shifting positions and plucking practice, one thing I'd suggest is to work on exercises or songs that you're more familiar with (and can play in your sleep) and then really really focusing on your consistency.
A different anecdote on this topic... back when I started learning to pluck with three fingers, I ended up just spending a few months of just doing right hand practice with scales and different rhythms to really get that consistent attack across all three fingers. The hardest part for me was sort of de-coupling the right and left hand rhythms.
Now, that was my situation, but I'd expect it to be less of a problem with just doing a index/middle finger plucking on the right hand due to how its a bit easier to do an even subdivision of I/M plucking to whatever your right hand is doing.
Its totally worth doing the practice to get that really consistent attack with both right hand fingers on all four of your fretting hand fingers and from string to string, IMO.
How's the setup on your basses as well? I find the setup and tension to be very important for how my fretless basses play vs the fretted ones, which are kind of whatever.
I have been practicing a series of arpeggios and scales through the sequence of the circle of 4ths to help with shifting. It's gotten better, so I am encouraged to keep practicing.
I have considered going to three fingered plucking, but haven't made that transition yet. Right now I am just working on consistent alternating with I/M I have been tempted to try three, maybe I will give that a shot with my scales and arpeggio practice. Thanks!
I'd focus on getting that consistency with 2 first. It will work better in the long run as it'll help you build a better foundation to expand on in the future if you choose to go to some other technique.
I'm not sure how long you've been playing, but its super important to get the fundamentals of good technique down, and if possible, to the point of not having to think about them at all. This is so you can move on to more challenging pieces of music without having devote thought to how you're plucking the bass or moving across strings.
I ended up going to 3 finger plucking years ago because I play a lot of thrash and death metal which has a ton of stupid fast stuff in it. I could do it all with 2 fingers, but fatigue and RSI was a consideration in the thrash band I was playing with at the time, so I made the move. It is a LOT trickier than 2 fingers because, now, you have to have to worry about attack with 3 different fingers, different hand shape as you pluck and a much different approach to playing across different strings.
Lot of good stuff in this post!
I play primarily jazz and with songwriters, and am just looking for some occasional bursts of speed for solos. I have been playing since 2016, but am on disability, so I play several times each day. Thank you for all of your input, I'm truly grateful.
One more thing I would add to the "practice slow" mantra is to periodically push yourself to go as fast as possible while staying focused on proper technique. Don't worry about mistakes too much and instead try to pick out specific areas where those mistakes are most pronounced. I find I typically have a lot of issues with my pinky, for example.
This will do two things: 1) it will help you get a sense for how the piece sounds at higher tempos which makes the transition between slower and faster practice modes easier (less cognitive load) and 2) you might find your technique at a slower pace doesn't work when you speed things up due to ergonomics. This last point is critical in getting hand and finger positions correct, especially in transitional sections.
As an example, I've been doing sweep picking exercises on guitar for a while now. When I started I did slow, methodical practice until I built up a decent arpeggio sequence. When I tried to speed this up nothing worked and what I realized was that while I felt like I was sweeping at a slow pace, I was actually doing little micro-plucks of the strings. Speeding up forced me to actually perform sweeping more fluidly but I had to re-learn the motions a bit.
This will do two things: 1) it will help you get a sense for how the piece sounds at higher tempos which makes the transition between slower and faster practice modes easier (less cognitive load) and 2) you might find your technique at a slower pace doesn't work when you speed things up due to ergonomics. This last point is critical in getting hand and finger positions correct, especially in transitional sections.
As an example, I've been doing sweep picking exercises on guitar for a while now. When I started I did slow, methodical practice until I built up a decent arpeggio sequence. When I tried to speed this up nothing worked and what I realized was that while I felt like I was sweeping at a slow pace, I was actually doing little micro-plucks of the strings. Speeding up forced me to actually perform sweeping more fluidly but I had to re-learn the motions a bit.
Agreed. I do think slow practice is still a good thing, but you also have to have your body experience what playing fast feels like. Alot of times your technique actually changes a bit to accommodate faster playing and forces some micro adjustments that playing slow won't show you.
My experience as a new player was that I thought my left hand was limiting my speed, but it was actually my right hand that couldn’t keep up. I’m sure someone on here has figured out a way to look at that more in depth, but for me it was a SBL video or two that helped, plus the idea of speed “bursts”.Practice going at the desired speed for a bar or two, till you fall off and over time 2 bars becomes 6…. Etc.
In reality, the key to speed is synchronisation of left and right hands. I've posted about it here a number of times, so a search would be quicker than me retyping everything again.
