CHAPTER TWO

The seven principles of guitar speed

Key Principle Of Guitar Speed #1

Posture
As ridiculous as it might seem, having a correct posture is extremely important for any
guitarist, playing any style of music. There is no exception for a guitarist who is playing
an electric guitar, at a fast rate of speed. In fact, this is one of those big secrets that is
easily overlooked. Bad posture for a guitarist who wants to develop a significant amount
of speed would be slouching. Correct posture is an upright position with relaxed arms and
neck. You should never hang your head directly over your guitar neck. Instead you
should always keep your back straight, without stressing the muscles, and keep your head
upright and relaxed. It seems silly, but this is number one of the Key Principles Of Guitar
Speed. Now reflect upon the images below for further clarity.

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Key Principle Of Guitar Speed #2

Patience

Do not be fooled by the word patience. It doesn’t mean taking years to master something.
It means the opposite. This is extremely key to developing your guitar speed, as most
beginning guitarists try to rush things. Each time you try to make the development of
speed happen faster, you set yourself back by extreme amounts of time. How much time?
Just trust me. As someone who could have reaped the rewards years earlier, I wasted
years just trying to get fast at guitar. It is quite possible, though not guaranteed, to go
from start to finish within a few months or less.

The guaranteed part all depends on how willing you are to just “do things by the book”.
That was my problem. I fought the wisdom that had already been laid down before me. If
you are serious about this – DON’T DO THAT! Commit yourself, because a few months
is nothing within the lifespan of an individual.

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Key Principle Of Guitar Speed #3

Listen

I’m not talking about listening to the music or what you are playing, I’m talking about
listening to the physical aspects of guitar training. It is key to be able to distinguish the
difference between good, progressive tension in the hands, and harmful tension in the
hands.

How do we determine this? If your hands are warm and you can feel the muscles slightly
beneath the skin of your hands, then you are making progress in training your muscle
memory. If it feels like the skin is so taught that your hand begins to ache, you must stop.

If you do not do this, then you will be setting yourself back months on end. It could quite
possibly take you days to recover, and the name of the game is daily progress.

A good example of this would be if the meat of your thumb starts to ache in your picking
hand. That is a very bad type of tension and this area of the hand should not feel pain at
all.

It is common for the hands to be stiff, no matter how good you are, when you first start
practicing on a particular day. Do not stress over this. However, your hands should be
worked up to a state of Jello, where they are so strong that you cannot feel them. Its when
you can feel them too much that you should be alarmed. If you are serious, then you will
not break this rule. Think of it as the rule of thumb. This is very, very important. I
neglected, like many guitarists now, this golden rule, no matter how aware of it I was.
There are a lot of great guitarists out their who are quite famous, who also broke this rule.
They recovered, like myself, but why set yourself back so many years?

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Key Principle Of Guitar Speed #4

Proper Picking

When it comes to picking, it would be totally unfair to say that this is right and this is
wrong. It is simply not that black and white. Everyone has a different style. You may find
that figuring out how to hold a guitar pick for different techniques and strategies will
require massive amounts of experimenting over the years. I can not tell you what to do,
because no one hand is alike. I can however give you some advice on the different
approaches to holding a guitar pick and picking itself. This is a process to figure out and
you should try every approach for a while to see what works best for your picking hand.

Holding the guitar pick

When it comes to holding a guitar pick, there is one approach that is the correct approach.
Anything outside of this is just plain wrong. You should use only your thumb and index
finger to hold the guitar pick – never use your thumb, index finger and middle finger.
This will lock up the meat of the thumb and make the muscles tense in your picking hand,
preventing you from reaching a good amount of speed.

The index finger

The index finger is a tricky thing to figure out. For years I pinched the pick between the
thumb and index finger, which is shown in the image below.

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The Pinch Hold

Some guitarists are able to use this kind of pick hold effectively. It didn’t work for me
and I found that when I did this, the joints in my index finger would lock up and my hand
would become very sore. When I was working on exercises, my stamina was drastically
reduced. By making a slight alteration with the index finger, I was able to keep a
constantly relaxed feeling in my picking hand. By simply sliding the last joint of my
index finger back towards the palm of my hand, I was able to increase my speed
dramatically. This type of pick hold looks like this..

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Closed Index Finger Pick Hold

Hand posture

The posture of the hand is also extremely important for improving ones technique and
cleanliness on the guitar. For years I used an open hand approach, but eventually found
that when it came to playing solos, it made the movement of the pick to extreme,
depleting my accuracy for single note action. This open hand pick hold looks like this.

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Open Hand Pick Hold

When it comes to playing fast rhythms, especially intricate strums or fast metal
structures, I still use this type of pick hold. I do this, because the hand now acts like a
pendulum, which gives me a better swing for strumming all six strings in fast succession.
For all my solo work and some instances of rhythm guitar, I now use the closed hand pick
hold, which looks like this.

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Closed Hand Pick Hold

The closed hand pick hold is very effective for soloing, because the minute movements of
the pick are refined, and it keeps the pick anchored in the area where it should be. If you
choose to pick like this, then it is very important that you not clench your hand into a ball
or fist. The hand must be relaxed, and because the remaining fingers are not stretched out,
it naturally is much more relaxing. You have to remind yourself when you are working
on exercises to not tense the hand with either approach.

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The pick itself

The guitar pick is very important. I’m not going to address what pick size or thickness to
use, because this is a very personal preference, but I am going to talk about how much of
the pick you should hold. If you are striving for rapid speeds, then you need to hold the
pick close to the plectrum (tip of the pick), leaving only an eighth of an inch or so
exposed. It is ideal to only use the very tip of the pick when practicing. This way, when
you are changing from string to string, you won’t have the pick buried by too much of the
string, and can neatly glide to the next string. You can think of it as brushing the very top,
outer layer of the string. Picking with the very tip of the pick is also ideal for pinch
harmonics, which we will be getting to later.
Amount Of Plectrum

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The two angles of the pick

Again, you must find what is comfortable for you, but there are two angles working at
any one time with the pick.

• The rotation angle

• The side angle

Here is a break down of those two angles.

Pick Rotation Angle

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As you can see, this is a perfect circle consisting of 360 degrees. The best way to apply
this is to grab a guitar pick, hold it up to this image and center it within the circle. Take
the guitar pick and rotate the left side of it clockwise until the left side is in perfect
alignment with the green line. This will roughly be the rotational angle that you will want
to pick single notes with. If this angle is too extreme for your tastes, you may modify this
to comfort, but keep in mind the rotational factor.
Side Angle

When the side angle and the rotational angle are combined, the results can greatly
improve your picking efficiency and clarity. This side angle is also quite necessary for
producing incredible sounding pinch harmonics.

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The pinkie anchor

A lot of well known guitarists will anchor their pinkie finger to the body of the guitar.
Sometimes this comes about by habit and sometimes it is a conscience decision. It keeps
the picking hand steady, but I personally choose not to use this approach, as it tends to
lock my hand up. Again, using the pinkie as an anchor is neither good nor bad, and comes
back to a personal preference. If you choose to do this, you can either anchor the pinkie
finger with just the tip of the pinkie, or with the side of the pinkie. Both approaches are
generally done just below the High E string, and in some cases the pinkie is used to hook
around the lead pickup.

It also might just depend upon the guitar. A lot of guitarists who play on classic shred
guitars such as Ibanez’s and Jackson’s will tend to do this, though not all of them will. It
also has a lot to do with the overall structure of the guitar, and on my axe of choice, the
Les Paul, I prefer not to do this, simply because of the structure of the guitar.

I also studied classical guitar for a time. If you take classical guitar lessons, then a serious
classical guitar teacher will want to break you of the habit of anchoring your pinkie, for
the benefit of a looser hand for finger picking purposes. When I do finger picking, I
always anchor my pinkie to the body of the guitar, but found that the traditional classical
approach works best for my needs on an electric. Again, this is always an issue of
preference.

Key Principle Of Guitar Speed #5

Less arm – more wrist

A very important thing to understand about fast picking is that you need to learn to take
the emphasis away from your arm. This is a common bad habit that generally forms as
soon as a guitarist firsts picks up the guitar.

Its all in the wrist. At times you may even want to go so far as to practice the proper
arcing motion without the use of a guitar pick, and without actually playing the guitar.

This is also why Key Principle Of Guitar Speed #1, Posture is so important. Naturally
you must use the muscles in your arm to power the motion of the wrist, but if you are not
in a relaxed, upright position then you will cause a great deal of stress on your shoulder.

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To be more specific, you’ll feel it in the front side of your shoulder (Deltoid muscle), just
around the armpit.

Key Principle Of Guitar Speed #6

Lightness of touch

A lot of guitarists who have started out playing on acoustics are well aware of just how
taught the strings on an acoustic guitar can be. This requires forceful picking, but if you
are playing on an electric, which is really the guitar to develop speed on, then you will
have to correct this habit.

Picking lightly and only using a small portion of the plectrum is very, very important.
When those two principles are combined, the results are significant, and can add a great
percentage increase to your speed. Be mindful not to pick too lightly though, or the notes
will not have enough snap to them. Find the medium and go with it.

**Key Principle Of Guitar Speed #7 is contained within

Chapter 5 Basic speed drills – 3 finger exercises, as it is a
more appropriate place for the 7th principle.

If you’re ready to purchase the complete Essential Guide To Guitar

Virtuosity then you can do so by visiting

http://www.guitarspeedsecret.com

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