Let’s Exercise! Play Guitar Faster in 30 minutes

1. About This Course: Hi, my name is Jacob Lamb. I'm a professional musician and the owner of Lamb Music Lessons. In this course we're going to talk about exercises and techniques to play your guitar quicker. All of us feel like we've hit a plateau sometimes, like our right hand and our left hand just aren't sinking up and we can't hit the notes as quickly as we need to. This course aims to fix that with some techniques that you can bring into your daily practice routines. There will also be a beginner, intermediate, and advanced variation of everything that we talk about. These aren't ideas that you're going to outgrow in your playing career. I'm looking forward to getting started, so let's jump in together. 2. The KILLER Metronome Trick: Now let's set up all these exercises by talking about how we're going to use the metronome. And if you're like me, you hear the word metronome and you groan a little bit. But bear with me, this is going to change the way we practice these exercises. We're going to use a metronome to work on progressive overload. And here's what I mean by that. Let's say we start an exercise and we're able to do it at 50 beats a minute. That's awesome. Now we're going to push it once, we're comfortable with that, to 60708090, And then we're at 100, which of course is double 50. Very cool. Now what we're going to do is drop back down to 50 and then practice it double time. Okay, so now we're playing with our metronome back where we started, but we're playing it twice as fast and we go to 60, twice as fast, 708090100. So this is a really cool way not to just see growth, but to kind of look back and see, oh, now we're lapping ourselves, right? We're playing twice as fast or more than we were. So as we work through these exercises, start nice and slow, grow it, drop it, double it, and grow it again. 3. Before we play… check technique!: Okay, you're here because you want to play faster and we've got the exercises to help you do exactly that. Exercises won't be useful if our technique isn't correct. So let's double down on that and make sure that we've got proper technique when we're doing our exercises so that they're useful. It isn't the most glamorous lesson topic, but it just might be the most useful. When we're talking about playing guitar quickly, the biggest thing we need is to be loose. Now, typically with the human body, when we start moving quickly, we tend to tense up. And our body is trying to help itself do what we're telling it to do. But when we're doing quick picking and playing, the biggest thing is staying loose. So if you're feeling yourself tense up, either your fretting hand or you're picking hand, be really cautious to just loosen everything and then try again as loose as you can, Shake your hands out if you need to. With our picking hand, we want to be sure that our palm is nice and low. And we're playing with our wrist instead of our fingers or elbow, right? So if I'm here and my palm is scooped and I'm playing with my finger. There's really not a lot I can do from that point. We're going to lower our palm, Keep it as close as we can, and keep our pick nice and low. Then we're picking with our palm, making sure it's relaxed. Same thing with our fingers. We don't want to be doing exercises like this. There is a good gap of time between hitting these frets. We want to keep them so low that people can barely tell we're moving our fingers. When we move them quickly, it just looks like all four are pressed down at the same time. This will take a little bit of time to get down, but thankfully, we've got some exercises coming up. So you're going to have a chance to practice it. Two more things here. When we're picking, we're not scooping, right, we're not twisting our wrist down or up, we're just moving back and forth. A great exercise for this is actually to take your guitar and flip it around. I know we can't play much this way, but just doing this will get that muscle memory going for the movement we need. You can do this while you watch TV or a movie. Super simple, okay? So just back and forth. The very last thing to make sure we can play as quickly as we need to is efficient fingering when we're actually playing a riff. I remember once in music college, I was sitting with a professor and telling him I just cannot play any faster and I don't know what to do. And he had me play a couple of things and he said, Jacob, everything, technique wise, great. And you've got the speed. You just need to adjust your fingering when you're playing rifts, economy of fingering so that we have easy movements from one note to the next. As long as your left hand and right hand technique is good and you're making sure that your fingering for each riff is the simplest and most streamlined that it can be. Let's take a look at some exercises together to speed up our playing muscles. 4. The Basics: Alternate Picking: If you're playing Rifts and songs, you probably know what alternate picking is. But if we're just getting into the idea of starting to play a little quicker, this might be a new concept for some of us. When we first learn guitar, we know to take our picking hand and move down with it. Whether it's chords or single notes, sometimes in a strumming pattern, we'll move down and up. Now we're taking that down and up idea and moving it into single notes. Instead of picking something down every single time. Now we're alternating notes down, up, down, up. This immediately, right off the bat, gives us twice the speed, right? We can only go so fast, moving only down. If we can make use of picking both ways, all of a sudden we have a lot more speed. Now, alternate picking is huge and there are two ways we're going to use it when we're doing these exercises. The first way is when we start an exercise, we're going to pick down first like we're used to. Okay, switch strings. Switch strings. The other way to make the most use of our practice time is to start the opposite way as well. Start picking up, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. The reason we do it both ways is that we're going to need to utilize both ways when we're playing songs. So if we're comfortable with both ways, there's not going to be a fast picking string jumping technique that can stump us. 5. Learning to Walk: The Spider Exercise: We're going to start with a simple spider walking warm up. Now for most of these techniques, we're going to need to put our fingers into a box. And by a box I mean four fingers on a four fret box. But that box can be anywhere on the neck. In fact, sometimes we'll move it in the middle of an exercise. For this one right here, we're going to start from the third fret, so I'll put my first finger on the third fret, second finger on the second fret, third finger on the third fret, and the pinky on the fourth fret. And that will be my little box right there. I'm not going to change where my fingers go for now. Now for this exercise, I'm just going to take a string and I'm going to play 1234, again using alternate picking. Now we can use this one from the thickest string to the thinnest string and then back down. So I'm going to start at string number six and I'm going to play 12341234, all the way up the neck. And I'm going to work on the alternate picking and keeping my fingers nice and low. When I get to the top I'm going to roll it back down. 4321 Daddo. Okay. That's the basic version of this exercise. Now the intermediate version doesn't change all too much, we're going to work our way up 1234 again. But when we get to the top, we're going to take our box. We're going to shift it up by one fret and then work our way down, 4321. When we get to the bottom of that, we're going to shift up again and then work our way up. Now we're taking this shape and we're moving it slowly up the neck. Here's what that would sound like. I'll start again from the third fret at the top, from my pink, I'm going to shift up and come back down. And then at the bottom I'm gonna shift up again. Now I'm working my way up to Fritz higher than I was Now for the advanced variation of this, we're going to mix up the fret, so it's not just 1234. We can do this using maybe a shape like 1324. We can pick whatever shape we want. But let's look at 132-13-2132, If we want to shift up from there, we can do that as well. We could even extend beyond the four frets and reach the pinky for a fifth fret outside of our box. So maybe we could work up 135 to four. Again, always working on that alternate picking as we play. 6. Starting to Jog: Doubled Triplets: Let's move on to the next exercise which has to do with doubled triplets. Now here we're taking our box and we're picking three notes out of that box to walk up with. Now we're going to play each string two times, and we have a few shapes that we can do here. I could play 124-13-4123, or 234. Okay, so let's start with 134. And I'm going to play each string two times. Now why is this so useful? Well, some of those shapes, like 134 and 124 are really common in modes. This is helping our muscle memory shift quickly between strings and modes. And especially for our picking hand, using three notes instead of four notes forces us to do the shape both ways, starting up. Okay, so there's the basic variation, you can go up and back down with it. Now the intermediate variation is we're going to take the two shapes, 123 and 234, and we're going to walk all of those up. And then we'll change it when we get to the top. 12. 323-412-3234 Now at the top, we're going to work our way back down and reverse the pattern. 432321. So here's the whole thing together. Now the advanced variation here is a lot of fun to play. We're taking all four shapes, We're going to play them on each string before we move to the next string. And we're going to keep expanding them up. So we're going to play 12, 312-413-4234, And you'll notice we keep changing one note. The first one is 123, we're changing our top note to the panky, 124, we're changing our middle note up, 134, and then we're changing our lowest note, 234. Now we have to do that on every string, coming up and down. Mm. Now coming back down, we're reversing 43, 243-142-1321 Let's try that quickly together. That is a hard one, but really satisfying when you finally get it right. 7. We’re Running Now: String Skipping: Okay, so we're getting more comfortable with odd patterns in our left hand and alternate picking in our right hand. Now we need to get more comfortable jumping from string to string. So what we're going to do is take the original spider exercise and we're going to start sharing it between two strings. So as a really basic exercise, we can do 1234, but this time instead of moving 1234, I'm now sharing the string, every other note, 6565. And my next time will be five and four. Five and four. Now I'm keeping the alternate picking going, so I'm hitting the outside of both strings and when I shift the alternate picking, so I'm trying it the other way, I'm hitting the inside of both strings. So let's do 1234 and share it between two strings. Now from here I'm going to shift which note is on which string. So I'm playing one on the higher string, two on the lower string, three on the higher string, four on the lower string. Now the intermediate version is to extend that box and add in a fifth note. So maybe here I want to do 13524, again alternating between strings, and then I would shift it 13524. Those are some really interesting patterns that we've probably never played before. For the advanced version, now we're using six notes in total, so one of them will have to be doubled. But we're playing two notes on a string before we change strings. So on the sixth string, one, two notes on the fifth string, one, two notes back to the sixth string for one, two notes. So something like this, maybe I want to play. Well, we'll keep it simple. We'll go 123454. Back down, right? I would play 123454. Let's make it a little more complicated. Let's go 124354 and then back down. Your job is to make up some creative patterns that will challenge both your fretting hand and your picking hand. 8. Going Beast Mode: The Mode Shuffler: Now here we're talking about the mode shuffler. If you don't know your modes or you're not familiar with some of the shapes, that's okay. Go and learn them and then come back to this lesson. Now, the mode shuffler is when we jump around a mode, it helps us both memorize the shapes, which is super helpful. Then of course, challenges our fretting hand and our picking hand. There are a few ways to do this, let's chat about them. For the basic method, we're walking up a fret by two steps, and then taking one step back, up by two and down by one. Something like this, one, two back. And we can do the same thing on the way down, going down by two notes and up by one. Another way I like to do that basic variation is to not play the note in between and just jump up two steps and back by one. This makes it a little more challenging on the picking hand to go back and forth so quickly, but better for the fretting hand to hit all the notes in between. Now the intermediate variation is the same thing, but we're going up by three notes and down by two notes. So we'll start from our root here, and this time we'll go 123, 121-231-2123, And the same thing on the way down, moving down 123 and up 121234. Now, as you may have guessed, the expert or advanced version of this is moving up by a whole four notes and down by three. So from our root we're moving up 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3. The same thing on the way down, 1234, 123. Now again, not only will that get your picking and your fretting hand really comfortable with playing common shapes and jumping string to string, but will also help you memorize your modes really quickly. 9. Beast Mode Bonus Step: String Skip Modes: Here's a bonus step, not beginner, intermediate or advanced, for the mode shuffler. Now as I was planning out this course and writing out the exercises and techniques, I actually figured this one out and discovered I really enjoyed it and how it worked. Now we're taking a mode shape and we're working up and down, but jumping strings, so we're moving two strings, one string back, two strings up. So for example, I would take the Ionian mode and I would play up the sixth string to the fourth string, back to the fifth string, to the third string, back to the fourth string, to the second string, back to the third string, to the first string. So it would sound like this and then back down. That one is great for practicing gaps, jumping over a string and picking gaps as well. 10. Burns so Good: The Forearm Killer: The fore arm killer, the bane of every guitarist's existence. Now this one is the closest to a workout of anything we've got, and it will actually tone your forearm. So added benefit. This one here, we've got our four fingers and we're going to tap as quickly as we can between them. So we don't need our picking hand for this, but we do need a timer. Now, the variations, beginner, intermediate, and Advanced are just going to be more time, 1020/32 For this one, I'm going to take my first to second finger and tap as quickly as I can for 10 seconds. When I've done that, I'm going to shift the next two fingers to my two middle fingers, two to three. When I've done that, I'm going to shift again three to four. By now the arm is probably burning. But we've got three more shapes to do now. We're going to put some gaps between our fingers. I'm going to hit one to three for 10 seconds. Two to four for 10 seconds. Then finally one all the way to four. I've done all the combinations of my fingers. Now your hand is cramping, your forearm is burning. Why did we do that? We're just in pain. Well, all the muscles that we're fatiguing right there, we're actually strengthening. And they're the muscles that we need to be able to continue to play quickly, right? We don't want to play one riff and then our hand hurts like nobody's business. We want to be able to continue playing after we play fast. And we want to be able to play faster, longer. So this one works out all of the muscles we need to do that fight through the pain, and you'll be a better guitarist. 11. A quick Cool Down: String Stretches: All right, we've got our technique down, we've got exercises. We've burned our forearm. Now it's time to cool down a little bit. Here's what we're going to do. We're actually going to stretch our fingers in a way that's specific to our instrument. I'm going to take all four fingers and I'm going to place them on the first string. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to reach one finger at a time, all the way back to the sixth string. I'm going to extend it far as I can and pull it back. And I'm going to do that ten to 15 times for each finger. With my first finger, I'll reach forward and reach back ten times. This is not only working out my finger dexterity, but it's also going to help how quickly I change things like chords or notes. Now I'm going to do the same thing with the middle finger, then I'm going to shift it to the third finger. Finally, I'm going to do it with my pinky finger. When we've got this down, or we've at least done it, we can shift our fingers to the second string. Then maybe try the same thing. We don't want to overdo this on our fingers. Maybe just stick with first and second string. If you're doing both strings, do it ten times. If you're doing only one string, you can do it up to 15 times. But just once a day on this exercise is great and we've loosened up a lot of the tendons that are ready to play even faster. 12. What’s Next: Practice Tips: Having these exercises and being able to add them to our practice routine is great. But how do we actually know that they're helping? Well, like we mentioned at the beginning of this course, playing with a metronome is huge, but we don't play with a metronome. To stay where we're at with the metronome, I would say grab a piece of paper and a pen, or open a notes book on your device and start marking down how quickly you played, at what date, and then set some goals for yourself. Say, okay, in one week I want to raise the speed of this exercise by maybe five beats per minute or even seven go one beat per minute faster every day. Well, by the end of the month, if you've done that, you should be 30 to 31 beats per minute faster on an exercise, which is a huge gap. So not only do we want to write down goals to speed metronomes up, but we want to look back so we can kind of chuckle at ourselves and say, oh my goodness, I used to be able to play that exercise at 80 beats per minute. Now look at me, I've got it going at 111 beats per minute. Now the cool thing is that doesn't stick with these exercises. We can start utilizing that method to riffs when we combine this metrono method with riffs. And we bring in these techniques to help warm our hand up and cool it down. And teach it all these shapes and how to move, we can all of a sudden start seeing progression in speed. 13. Final Project and Congratulations!: You've made it to the end of the course. Congratulations. Now as a final project, we want to take one of these exercises and show the class how you're doing with it. It can be the basic intermediate or advanced variation. It doesn't matter where you're at, but we want to see you do it. If you don't have a means to record or you're a little recording shy, that's okay. Just write down which exercise you picked and how it's going, what you found easy, what you found difficult, what rifts you're trying to learn, and if any of them helped you. If you have any questions, you can always reach out to me at Jacob at Lamb Lessons.com I love hearing from you guys. Or you can go to me directly at Lamb Lessons.com and I'll see you there. Happy playing.