Developing speed

I wonder if any of the forum contributors if have any other methods of upping speed and fluency.

I see videos of blues/shredders flying all over the place and as such practice diligently daily with a metronome and practice my pentatonic (diff positions) and different modal scales.

The problem I have is transferring my scale knowledge into usable on the fly improvisations of any speed.

Should I be learning set mini riffs or what? I have come to a bit of a wall.

thanks

Hi Phil,

What you are asking is more improv related than speed related I believe. Speed will come with time when you practice enough, and when you really want to shred, working with a metronome to develop speed will work perfectly fine.

But to come up with improvisations on the fly you must develop a library of licks and riffs to be able to comfortably improvise. When you have those licks and riffs at your disposal it will be easy to use the scale and make it your own. It becomes also much easier to come up with variations of those licks and riffs.

Here at GuitarTricks you have the Blues courses and Rock courses in the Core Learning Systems.

Rock level 1: https://www.guitartricks.com/course.php?input=rock1
Blues level 1: https://www.guitartricks.com/course.php?input=blues1

Both these courses teach you the basics, and even include improvising. Both are EXCELLENT courses! Anders does a great job of teaching you some licks and how you can use these licks to improvise and above all make them your own (so you can make up your own variations). After that the level 2 courses go more in depth and are more advanced.

I really recommend these courses. You can start with whichever genre you prefer. These courses are the best I have come across on the web.

Hope his helps,

JJ

Challenge yourself to move around between the scale positions. The better you can get at seeing how and where they connect, the easier it will be and the faster you can move around between them. I started by moving up one position and down the next. When you're good at that, start skipping positions and then bridge them together. Take it slow at first then gradually build your speed. If you're having trouble with one position in particular, practice moving in and out of that position.

To extend on the excellent advice already given, if you have one position totally down, look at extensions of it. On the B and E strings, go up to the next position. On the E and A strings, drop to the previous position. Then fill in the middle.

I'll just reiterate how incredible the blues course is here to help you learn improvistion. Anders has some great advice too if you read through his section of the forum. It's a common stumbling block and I came here looking to get past it...which I did.

Learn how to imrpovise slow. You can create some really cool solos without speed. Speed is just ONE dynamic you can use for creating a solo. Anders is a master of this...he can certainly play fast, but he'll show you that you don't always have to.

Hi! To improvise effectively, learning your fingerboard is essential. Learn the intervals of each and every scale you`re going to use. An excellent starting point is to begin and your own improvised line on a chord tone and end it on a chord tone of the subsequent chord. By that I mean, start for example on the root of an underlying chord, play a melody that you like and end on an chord tone of the next chord. For instance, when you improvise over G major and D major chords, start on G (a root) of a G major chord and end your phrase on say F# (3rd) of the D chord. It takes time to get used to it and eventually the speed will come too. :)

Originally Posted by: dolezal.jiriHi! To improvise effectively, learning your fingerboard is essential. Learn the intervals of each and every scale you`re going to use. An excellent starting point is to begin and your own improvised line on a chord tone and end it on a chord tone of the subsequent chord. By that I mean, start for example on the root of an underlying chord, play a melody that you like and end on an chord tone of the next chord. For instance, when you improvise over G major and D major chords, start on G (a root) of a G major chord and end your phrase on say F# (3rd) of the D chord. It takes time to get used to it and eventually the speed will come too. :)

Great advice, Jiri. I'm just starting to get the hang of landing on a specific interval depending on what chord is being played.