Although playing guitar fast is not every guitarist’s most significant goal, those who do want to improve their guitar speed desire this skill very much and are often frustrated with being unable to develop this part of their guitar playing.

If this describes you, I want to share with you several important insights about building guitar speed that will greatly help you to develop this skill.

Good news and bad news:

The good news is that virtually anyone can learn to play guitar fast. In addition, you can directly control the practicing process to make it more effective and achieve your guitar speed goals in a lot less time than it takes an average guitar player.

The bad news is that most guitar players (those who can’t yet play guitar fast) are totally on the wrong track in their approach to increasing guitar speed.

I see this all the time when working with new guitar students who come to me wanting to improve their guitar playing.

The typical path to increasing ones guitar speed is usually limited to starting to practice slowly with a metronome and gradually increasing speed in small increments.

Such a tactic can be effective early on in the process of learning new guitar exercises, but if you rely on it exclusively to develop your maximum guitar speed it will lead to plateaus and frustration.

Here are a few reasons why:

Great guitar players who can play guitar fast were able to successfully master all of the above mentioned elements of guitar speed whether they consciously realized it or not.  You need to do the same in order to increase your guitar speed to your maximum speed potential.

To help you expand and improve upon the conventional approach for building guitar speed, here are several guidelines to follow

Get specific about what problems you are having with trying to increase your guitar speed.

Simply saying “I can’t play guitar fast” is NOT specific enough. Being unable to play guitar fast is only a symptom of a more complex problem that usually has several causes. As you have seen above, the root of your guitar speed limitations can exist in any or all of the specific technical elements that make up the multidimensional skill of “playing guitar fast”.

Knowing exactly what is causing your problem is the first step to solving it.  When you learn exactly what is holding you back, you can focus your guitar practice sessions on the specific problems that needs to be overcome.

Having your guitar playing analyzed by an expert guitar teacher is the fastest way to get this required level of clarity.

Use a variety of practice strategies for increasing your guitar speed.

As your guitar playing skill level evolves, so will your specific guitar technique challenges. Therefore, the practice techniques you use at each stage of your guitar playing must evolve as well in order to be effective.

There is no such thing as ‘one’ ultimate guitar practice routine for increasing your guitar speed. Of course there are approaches to practicing guitar that are far more effective than others, but the way you organize your guitar speed training routines should be unique to your specific guitar technique and guitar speed challenges at any given time.

Practice integrating your guitar techniques together to avoid sounding like a guitar speed robot.

Over the years of teaching hundreds of guitar players to improve their guitar technique (as well as other musical skills), I have found that most guitarists spend very little time applying and integrating their musical skills and guitar techniques in particular.

This results in lack of musical freedom to express yourself completely and fully in any musical context.

When it comes to increasing your guitar speed, most guitarists typically focus on becoming faster with only one technique at a time.

For example, you may practice your sweep picking for 15 minutes, then move on to 15 minutes of legato, followed by 15 minutes of 2 hand tapping.

Although this approach will help you to improve at these techniques in isolation, you also need to specifically practice using all of these techniques ‘together’ in the same way that you will find these techniques used in real guitar solos.

Neglecting to do this will make your guitar playing sound unnatural and rather ‘robotic’ as you will struggle to play consistently well with using a variety of guitar techniques at once.

Although ‘guitar speed’ is clearly only one out of many musical areas that must be mastered in order to become a truly expressive and creative musician, it is a highly desired skill that most guitar players do not have.

You can see many examples of effective guitar speed building strategies that I use with my students by studying this free mini course on how to build guitar speed.

Applying the suggestions above during your guitar practice sessions and following the guidelines from this free guitar speed training mini course will help you greatly to build as much guitar speed as you desire for your specific guitar playing goals.

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If you are a guitar enthusiast, chances are you have tried to learn guitar but you gave up after only a couple of days. When the sore fingers and time crunches set in, you were on the fringe of quitting.

If this is a good description of you, I encourage you to try learning one more time. I am here to show you some great tips which can aid you in overcoming the problems in the initial stage of learning guitar.

1. Get To Know Your Guitar Well

No amount of practice can help if you don’t know all about the instrument you’re playing and how to take care of it. Also, you can’t play the instrument well if you don’t know how to tune it, or the functions of its various parts. Devote sometime on the user’s manual…this is the easiest and simplest way to start off!

2. Learn With A Guitarist Or Follow A Guitar Guide

You need to get some help. It can be a beginner guitar tutorial, or someone you find from online guitar player’s forums. The best type of help is of course from a real guitar expert who can teach you face to face, as you learn much faster that way.

3. Get Beyond Sore Fingers And Aching muscles

Don’t let this stop you. This is something all beginner players will experience and you can get over it with time and continued practice. Your muscle just needs to get used to the pressure, and the soreness will soon fade if you just keep practicing. Having said that, squeezing a massage ball will help you release the soreness in the first couple of days.

4. Start With Open Chords

You should start off with learning the open chords, and make sure you learn it in all the new positions. After you get skilled with open chords, you can move on to bar chords which is slightly difficult. Remember, your muscles require some time to adapt to these chords.

5. Practice Makes Perfect

This proverb holds true for whatever you try to achieve in your life. With that being said, practicing guitar repeatedly can be quite boring after some while. To maintain your interest level, it is a good idea to play your favorite songs on your guitar. That way, you will find more fun with learning.

6. Make It A Habit To Tune Your Guitar Regularly

Do it before each practice or performance, as the music will lose all its charm with just one string wrong. So, if you want to be a good guitarist, keep these subtle things in mind – you cannot afford to compromise on them.

Just remember, learning to play guitar can be boring and frustrating sometimes but you will definitely be a better player if you can stick to it.

About the Author: Do you want to teach yourself guitar at home, in days from now, without feeling like to quit quickly? Check out our review of a well known online course which shows you exactly how to do that. Also check out this related article about how to learn guitar tabs.< Free Articles from PopularArticles.com: Learning to Play Guitar With These 6 Great Tips

Learning guitar barre chords is a difficult enough experience without putting extra pressure on yourself. Try to keep in mind that when you are playing you only need to lift your fingers just enough to change between chords. Also, when you’re holding down the barre, remember that you don’t have to barre every single string.

2. Don’t Use The Soft Part Of Your Finger

When you are making a barre try to hold it with the side of your finger and not the soft fleshy part. The easiest way to do this is to roll your finger slightly away from the fret. When you roll your finger it guarantees that you won’t be holding the barre with the fleshy bit – increasing your chances of sounding the chord cleanly.

3. Give Your Fingers a Workout

The easiest way to build your finger strength to exercise them regularly. This might seem strange at first but working out your fingers regularly will do wonders for your guitar playing. Check out the “Gripmaster” or grab a tennis ball and squeeze it for a few minutes everyday.

4. Buy a Good Guitar For Yourself

Bad guitars have bad action. Action is the measure of the distance from the fretboard to the strings and is usually measured at the 12th fret. A guitar with poor action will leave you struggling to play any chords correctly, but barre chords especially. There is nothing more frustrating than a poor piece of equipment holding you back.

5. Learn Guitar Using Lighter Gauge Strings

The reason acoustic guitarists find it so easy to pick up and play an electric is that the electric has a far lighter string gauge. When you are learning guitar the lighter strings make playing chords a lot easier. Once your finger strength has improved and you are more experienced choose the type of strings for the sound you want.

6. Try Learning Barre Chords Higher Up The Neck

The first barre chord that you learn as a new guitarist is the F major chord, followed by the B major chord. Sometimes this can a mistake. Both of these chords are near the head of the guitar where the fret spacing is much larger. If you’re struggling with barre chords, try practicing the shapes further up the neck towards the 5th and 7th frets.

7. Don’t Put Too Much Pressure on Yourself

When you do any exercise an important part of your routine is regular rests for recovery. The same goes for playing guitar. Try to take breaks and never play if your hands are sore or cramping.

Maybe you use to play and want to now get your guitar out from under the bed and become the next guitar hero? Whatever the case things have certainly changed a lot since I first learned and took lessons over 25 years ago.

Let’s face facts here; no “system” however groundbreaking is going to work for everybody. I found that attempting to learn as a beginner strictly from a book can lead to frustration.

In fact, the frustration can sometimes get to the point that you will simply drop out before you actually get started; which isn’t good. That will not get you any further along to becoming that impressive guitarist you’ve always dreamed of.

Today we’ll take a look at what online guitar lessons have to offer you. As a musician who has both taken and taught guitar lessons, I’ll attempt to break down some of differences and advantages for you.

On the surface you may think that learning to play guitar from online lessons would seem less popular or second rate compared to learning from the traditional, real live teacher. However, with the technology available today and the overall difference of costs involved, online guitar lessons are arguably the most effective teaching method available.

Today the average private lesson costs about $30 per half hour or $60 for a full hour. You’ll also need to factor in the time it takes to hop in your car and drive to wherever he or she may be and if the lessons are offered during a time that’s convenient for you. In short, realize that today you have other options.

Here is a brief overview at what is offered from online lessons and what you’ll get:

• Learn how to quickly build finger strength and agility. There are special techniques that will eliminate sore and clumsy fingers so you can play smooth, flowing guitar.

• A comprehensive library of the most commonly used chord progressions. Designed to get you playing soon and enjoy jamming along with your favorite music.

• Learning to read guitar “TAB.” Knowing Tab is the fastest way to start reading and writing guitar music. With this you can play ANY of the hundreds of thousands of songs for guitar on the web.

• Learn how to master impressive skills such as picking, strumming styles and tricked out scales. Hammer-ons, pull offs, vibrato, palm muting and much more.

• You’ll get Step-by-Step lessons on how to perform tricky guitar skills. Year’s worth of experience and hard-won information in a simple and easy to follow format.

• Discover insider secrets of how to ensure your strum sounds like a polished professional.

• Even the truth about how to get a guitar at below dealer cost and to decide if you should learn to play on an acoustic or electric guitar. Tips on what to look for when you choose to buy a used guitar.

• In many courses, you have lifetime access to online updates and a free email consultation line.

• Professionally recorded “jam along tracks” which you can play to and get the feeling of how you would sound playing with a real band.

Online guitar lessons are catching on in a big way, which is not surprising considering some of their major advantages. These courses start around $20.00 for a single DVD to several hundred dollars for the more advanced learning systems.

Most are fully backed with a money back guarantee so what do you have to lose? Regardless of your current skill level there is an online lessons course that will work for you.

Are you ready to get started and playing like the guitarist you’ve always dreamed of?

For my personal favorite course recommendation and additional bonus information, follow me here now: The Best Online Guitar Lessons. If you need to buy a guitar – visit this blog for more tips.