Speed Secrets – Part 5
Now that we’ve covered all the basics of speed playing, there are a few practice strategies that I’ve found useful over the years.
First, you’ll need to practice with a metronome. A metronome is a great way to measure your progress, and it helps keep your rhythm honest – you don’t want to become sloppy as the speed increases.
A metronome is useful for two types of drills. The first, which I call “˜laddering’ involves playing with a metronome at a given speed until you can play a drill perfectly. At that point, you’ll increase the speed of the metronome clicks, and start over again. Metronomes come in two basic flavors: mechanical and digital. Mechanical metronomes are basically clocks with a sliding weight that allows you to adjust the speed of the “˜click’ it produces; they typically have divisions ranging from 40bpm (beats per minute) to 208bpm. Digital metronomes, which are available as stand-alone battery or electric units, and as software for computers or iPhones. They can have various whistles and bells – literally. I’ve got one that rings a bell for beat one, and clicks on the other beats in various time signatures. Some will give you other sounds for divisions or subdivisions of a beat, and some will give you the option of a flashing light to accompany the click.
In a laddering drill, you might practice at 60bpm until you have a pattern down solidly, then move to 63, 66, 69, 72, 80, and so on. When you reach the top end of the metronome’s range, just cut the time in half and use subdivisions – eighth notes at 208 are the same speed as 16th notes at 104, so you can start there and move up to 108 and keep building your speed.
The other type of drill is one I call “leaping.” This will build your speed faster than laddering, but there’s a downside: because it forces your speed along, it also risks introducing sloppy behavior. I’d advise doing this leaping strategy only periodically – twice a week at most; the rest of your speed drills should be done with laddering, where you can focus better on your technique.
In a leaping drill, you start by playing at a speed you’re comfortable with. Then adjust the metronome to TWICE that speed and try it again. You won’t be able to keep up. Do your best with it, but just do it ONCE. Then set the metronome to slightly faster than your starting speed – if you started at 80bpm, try it at 84. You might find that you can now play it – in contrast to the frantic pace you were just trying to play, 84 seems a lot slower, even if 80 was your best effort to date. If you can play it properly at 84, leap up to 160 again and try it ONCE. Then try it at 88 – if you succeed, keep repeating until you find the speed where you fall apart.
If you make a mistake at the slower speed, stop! You don’t want to be practicing your mistakes and making them habits! Instead, go back to your original speed (80bpm in this example) and start over.
Finally, keep a log of your progress. Jot down the exercises you did, and the speeds you’ve achieved. That will give you a record of your achievements, and that can help you keep at it when you hit the inevitable plateaus.
Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 9 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.
© 2011, Tom Serb
Roy n NL
January 18th, 2012 @ 8:09 am
Reply to “Carmel”. From this site, I have never heard any reference to gender when instruction is given. There’s no gender in these titles; Musician, Guitarist, Author, Singer, Pianist, etc. Sounds to me as if you want to drive the car before knowing the location of the brake and gas pedal. Music is a language like the English language and before you can speak, write (Your and You’re) or play it, to study will be necessary. My passion is music, and in my attempt to be a well-rounded musician I work at it every day. I would like to thank the Staff and contributors at Guitar Noise for providing a path for me to follow. Obviously, there are those that don’t realize how much time and effort goes into the production of this site. Bless you all! (Please excuse my English. I have spent more time on my Music)
David Hodge
September 15th, 2011 @ 7:27 am
Hi Carmel
I’m truly sorry that you feel that Guitar Noise is a “crap site” based solely on the choice of song selection for our beginners’ song lessons. We have forty-two beginners’ song lessons out of the tens of thousands of songs out there and you’re right that we should have some by female artists. Well, female songwriters would be more appropriate because a good many of these songs have been covered by female artists.
And I don’t know if you’ve bothered to read any of the song lessons here or not, but if you have, then you should understand that our lessons are not like others on the web (whether written out or on video) in that we try to use the songs to teach all sorts of things about making music, from basic theory to transposing to arranging, such as in our lesson on Carol King’s “It’s Too Late,” which deals with taking a song that’s mostly associated with the piano and creating a way to play it on guitar that incorporates the feel of the original arrangement on a different instrument. Ultimately, the choice of song has always been about what lesson can be learned from it and not about who wrote the song.
The ideas discussed in these lessons are meant to help you learn any song you want to and to make it sound better than it might otherwise. We know that our song selection for our lessons is not incredibly diverse (and again, how can it be with only forty-two of them?) but we do know that you can learn an incredible amount about playing from our lessons.
And that’s what it comes down to – If someone is simply looking for songs he or she knows by artists he or she knows, there are zillions of places to find chords and tab. That’s never been what Guitar Noise is about.
But if one is interested in learning about playing, about becoming a more well-rounded guitarist and musician, then you will hopefully find the lessons here at Guitar Noise to be among the best you can get, and that includes those that one might pay for.
And, as always, we are very open to requests. Many of the song lessons we have, such as Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” have become lessons through requests. Again, please understand that we don’t simply post out songs because someone asks for them, we do so because we’ve managed to create a lesson out of the song that can teach specific music and guitar ideas to our readers.
As Paul mentions (and as you might be aware of if you’ve been following the site for the past months), we are in the process of negotiating purchasing the rights to use songs for our lessons from a number of music publishers. Should things go the way we want, we’ll be back to creating song lessons again very soon and the lessons we’ve initially asked for are from both male and female songwriters. We’re currently awaiting word to see what songs we’ll be given permission to use and how much it is going to cost to use them.
And, as has always been the case, the songs we ask for are those we feel we can create informative, entertaining and educational lessons out of. The gender of whomever wrote the song hasn’t been any factor in our choices. It’s all about the learning.
Thank you for making the time to post and I hope you’ll find our lessons useful to your further growth as a guitarist, musician and human being.
Looking forward to hearing from you again.
Peace
David
Guitar Noise Staff
September 14th, 2011 @ 5:34 pm
Off the top of my head there is Landslide – https://www.guitarnoise.com/lesson/landslide/
We are planning to add more songs from female artists once we get things sorted out with the publishers.
– Paul
carmel
September 14th, 2011 @ 3:07 pm
what a crap site… not one beginners song from a female artist.. maybe all guitarists are male???… get with the real world guys your not the only ones that can play a guitar!