I practice alternate picking and finger exercises at least every day for about 30 minutes or a little more, and also speed drills. Even if I get up to 200 BPM when I watch guys playing guitar, they seem like they are much faster than that. Whats a good speed to aim for to consider mastering finger exercises? My exercise is going from first fret to the 12 fret from low e to high e and back down with four fingers, then the first three fingers then index and ring and finally 2nd and 4th or pinky. I also practice this with the first pentatonic shape which is 1 4 then 1 3 then 1 3 then 13 then 1 4 and 1 4 and back down. Even when the metronome is reading 244 BPM it seems thats about the minimum speed most guitar players play, and even faster. Ideas?
Metronome Speed
# 1
One thing that I think makes some players seem faster than others at the same speed is the speed between notes. How long can they hang on a note and let it ring before they move to the next note? This adds to the appearance of speed more than playing notes faster, in my opinion. I found I was making notes very stacatto in the quest for the fastest metronome speed and my playing suffered for it. In my practice, I push for speed at the expense of clean playing to as fast as I can go, then I dial it back till it's exactly clean then try and analyze why it gets sloppy at a certain speed. Seems to help at least where I'm at now. :)[br][br]JM
# 2