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Guitar Lessons Pentatonic Scale

3 Exercises to Become a Faster Guitar Player

It inevitable, if you start learning guitar scales and solos you’re eventually going to want to play faster. How can you learn to play quicker? Well it starts by being accurate then adding speed to that. How to do you become accurate and consistent? With practice.

This article will share with you 3 different practice exercises you can do to improve your speed of play and your accuracy. By doing these each time you sit down to practice you will start seeing results in a week or two.

NOTE: If you’re currently taking guitar lessons you may want to discuss these exercises with your teacher. Likewise if you’re teaching yourself using a learn guitar dvd or similar self study product take a look ahead in your lessons to see if there are similar exercises coming later on. The course developer or your instructor may prefer you follow different methods to play faster

Exercise 1 – Learn your Scales

Knowing the notes on the guitar neck and the popular scales is important. f you don’t know your scales yet don’t worry. Do a quick search online for pentatonic shapes, or visit a beginner guitar website and search for pentatonic scales. What you’re looking for is an image of the first pentatonic position.

You’re going to take that first pentatonic position and memorize it. Don’t worry yet about what scale you’re playing the shape is what you need first.

Now start at the first fret on your guitar and play the scale starting on the low E string down to the high E string. Once you reach the 1st string play the scale backwards up to the 6th string. Next slide up to the second fret and do it all again, then the third fret, fourth fret and so on.

The key here is to learn accuracy with hitting the frets and the notes as you move up and down the neck forwards and backwards through the scale position.

Exercise 2 – Add Speed

Now we want to do exercise 1 again, but this time move things a little quicker. Using a metronome find a pace that is comfortable for you to play the first pentatonic shape. For some that might be 60-70 BPM for others it might be 100. The key is to find a comfortable speed to start at.

Click start on your metronome and starting on the first fret play the scale forwards and backwards. Now this time when you slide up to fret two increase the beats per minute on your metronome by one or two and continue to do this all the way up the neck.

Do this starts you off at a pace you’re comfortable with and then builds on it. Once you make it all the way up the neck you’ll have increased your speed by 12-16 beats per minute and hopefully maintained your accuracy and technique Stick with the same starting tempo for a week or so then try and increase it as to push yourself a little faster each week.

Exercise 3 – Down & Up Picking

Most beginners only hit the string on the down stroke with their pick. As you advance in your speed exercises you’ll probably find that hitting the string on the way down isn’t enough to play as quickly as you’d like. You need to hit it down and up so you get two plucks of the string in the same time you used to only get one. This can feel uncomfortable at first but we’ll work into it slowly.

Before you trying playing a scale start by just hitting the first string, low E, up and down a few times to get the feel Next move down to the 5th string, then the 4th and onwards all the way down to the 1st string. Now do it in reverse from the 1st string to the 6th string. This lets you get used to the feeling of double picking and moving between strings.

Finally add in the same pentatonic shape we’ve been using in the first and second exercises. You will probably find it tough to play fast right away. Getting the right timing between your picking hand and fretting hand is tough but start slow, master it then add speed just like before.

If you consistently do these 3 exercises for a period of four weeks you will get faster. Of course don’t abandon your other practice exercises. It’s important that you keep up with your guitar lesson dvd or guitar lesson plan Learning guitar is fun but to be good it takes practice and work. The great thing is if you put the work in then you’re almost guaranteed to come out a better guitar player then you were going in.

Guitar Scales Lesson – Pentatonic Scale and Playing up and Down the Neck

Guitar Lessons Pentatonic Scale