Scale Fingering

Has anyone ever heard of learning how to speed up their scale playing by prepositioning unused fingers ahead in the scale so they will already be in place? A well known teacher is prescribing this method. While it makes sense, I don't think I'm smart enough to think that far ahead of myself. Any ideas?

This one goes in technique. Someone will move it. Eggman!

Anyway It sounds logical and after practicing for many days and nights, you would be able to apply it.

Sounds like just something that comes naturally after you've been playing for awhile. It sounds promising at first because you're training yourself in your beginner years to think ahead and get your fingers ready.
However, there's other techniques that might suffer because of what you're doing because you don't have the experience to know what the fingering should really be like. You could end up speeding up your scales but end up lacking in the vibrato, bends and slides dept. which is where a lot of the feel comes from in lead playing.
Again..a lot of beginners fall into this trap of gaining speed and doing scales. Instead of always thinking about that, think about accuracy, clean playing, style, muting unplayed strings, using feel, originality and melody as well.

Originally Posted by: schmangeAgain..a lot of beginners fall into this trap of gaining speed and doing scales. Instead of always thinking about that, think about accuracy, clean playing, style, muting unplayed strings, using feel, originality and melody as well.

Couldn't agree more. If you can get the accuracy down first, you can always, always learn to play it faster as time goes by. It's a lot easier to learn something slow and build the speed up over time than if you can play it fast but not clean; it's a lot harder (and VERY frustrating) to go back and reteach your fingers the precision side of things.

Most of the guys and gals you see playing fast have spent hours of practising daily for years. Keep at it and it'll come to you, be it speed, understanding the theory, thinking ahead of yourself or anything else you might want to be able to do. Practise, patience and perserverence, them's are the key...

practice slow and precise till your brain records it than it takes over

Thanks for the advice. This is my first post and i appreciate that someone cares enough to respond.
:)