Sometimes we see videos on the internet of amazing guitarists, such as Michael Angelo Batio (below), whose hands seem to move at almost the speed of light. It’s very entertaining, but can also be very demoralising when you wish you could play like that too.
One technique used in this video is speed picking, which isn’t as hard as it first seems…
Really? Yes, most definitely.
First of all, speed playing is more rehearsed. Generally, when players are stringing notes together at this speed, there isn’t any improvisation going on, or rather improvisation is being done in a different and more economical way. A player will be thinking about different runs and licks that he already knows, rather than each individual note. For example, when Michael, switches to sweep picking arpeggios, he’s not thinking note to note, he’s picking one entire ready made arpeggio that he already knows well, followed by another to fit into the key he’s playing in. Instead of improvising 30 odd separate notes, he’s only thinking about 2 arpeggios.
This is important, because it’s extremely difficult to coordinate fretting with your left hand and getting the fast picking action correct with your right, if you are concentrating heavily on what to do with the melody as well. Basically, you’re asking your brain to think very quickly about 3 things simultaneously, which is very difficult, and will soon lead to you losing your way and making a bit of a hash of things, which leads me to my first point.
You need to get in to the right frame of mind to speed pick well. Yes, it does all sound very zen doesn’t it? As mentioned above, you can’t just start firing off a load of notes as rapidly as you can and hoping it’ll all hang together. It starts with piecing together phrases that you already know well enough that they are almost second nature to play, meaning you don’t have to think much about the melody. This frees up more brain power to deal with the complexities of getting your hands to play together in sync at speed. Very importantly, it should enable you to relax too, which we will talk much more about when we get to the right hand, but now on to the left.
Your left hand won’t be doing things very differently from normal. In fact, if you look closely at any of these speedy videos on youtube, and concentrate on just the left hand, it’s not moving nearly as quickly as you would imagine. It really isn’t that difficult to move just your left hand up and down a scale that you know, that quickly, so when you switch to a fast paced lick, keep your left hand relaxed. The hard bit is getting your right hand to co-ordinate with your left in a timely manner. If you do start to feel the pressure, you will end up fretting the strings harder and your hand will quickly tire. This is why you need to stay calm and relaxed. Getting agitated just ruins your flow.
If you do have problems getting either hand to move fast enough, you will need to “build speed”. This entails getting your metronome out, setting the beat to something comfortable, and repeating what you want to play at that measured pace, for a couple of minutes or more. Although you feel comfortable at this speed, what you are doing is re-enforcing your muscle memory, getting your fingers to remember the sequence, so although you aren’t physically practicing playing more quickly, it will enable you to do so.
Slowly, up the ante by increasing the tempo on the metronome until you get to the point where it all starts to fall apart. If you want to go faster than this speed, then drop the tempo back a bit and practice building your muscle memory at this reduced speed for a few minutes more. You should now find that the speed you struggled at before is easier than it was.
Obviously, you can’t continue doing this at an ever increasing tempo – there are limits, and the rule of ever diminishing returns applies here. The faster you want to go, the more time you have to put in building muscle memory. This technique also applies to your right hand, which we are going to talk about now.
There’s a few things to consider with the right hand. How you hold the pick, what kind of pick you use, where you place your hand, alternate or circular picking, but the main thing you need to get right with your right hand is economy of movement. When you pick that fast it’s very easy to get too carried away and really thrash away at the strings, but you’ll find you quickly start to cramp up. If this keeps happening to you, you’re trying to hard, you’re technique’s not right and you need to relax! If you watch the video above, you’ll see that most of the movement of the pick comes from the fingers and a little from the wrist – none from the elbow.
http://www.electric-guitar-blog.com/the-art-of-speed-picking/
You can get away with this, because in actuality, you don’t need to move the pick very far at all. This technique isn’t like strumming an acoustic or windmilling like Pete Townsend. You move the pick just far enough over the string to pluck it and that’s it. Combined with this, is how you hold your pick. In order to keep your picking motion as small as possible, you need to grasp the pick in such a way that there’s very little of the picking end showing, so the ends of your fingers are really close to the string. Also, use quite a thick pick. A flexible one will mean you have to drag the pick further over the string to pluck it, so again, less movement is involved with a thicker plectrum.
Accuracy helps here too. If you know exactly where the plectrum and string are in relation to each other your hand won’t stray far which further minimises your movement. Most people do this by anchoring their hand somewhere on the guitar. I do it by resting the heel of my palm on the top of the bridge. I hear Dave Mustaine does it by resting one finger on the top E string, and in the video Michael rests one or more of his fingers on the guitar body, possibly feeling the edge of a pickup. The best thing for you is what feels most comfortable.
If you are still getting cramped up, then your body is telling you something. If it’s in your elbow and forearm, you’re using your elbow and foream, which you need to stop. If it’s in your wrist, you’re using your wrist too much and your fingers not enough. If it’s in your hand, you’re digging in with the pick too hard, again you can see how important it is to relax your hands. Speed should flow from your hands without any fight.
Lastly, there’s alternate picking, sometimes called circular picking. In a nutshell, this is just picking up and down. When playing a fast rhythm, most people use just down picks, which is fine when you’re picking 2, 3, or more strings, but if you’re picking a line of single notes, the quickest way to pick every second note is to pull your pick back up across the string. It’s easy to see why this is potentially hugely quicker. You pick the first note downwards, and then instead of bringing the pick up and back past the string and then picking downwards for the second note, you simply catch it on the way back, and pick down for the third note. The back and forth motion is called “alternate” picking. Some people prefer to make the motion in a circular manner, hence “circular” picking.
If you’re not used to it, alternate picking can feel a bit strange at first, but give it a while and it soon becomes second nature, whereupon your speed will increase as you have to think about it less. The “build speed” example above can also greatly help with this.
And finally, speed picking also brings with it a different character to your tone. A little known side effect which is often overlooked, is that alternate picking actually “sounds” faster. If you play a run with the minimum of picking and use hammer ons and pull offs in a legato style, then play it again at exactly the same tempo, but this time with alternate picking, it really does sound faster. I think this may be due to the added attack and definition the pick adds, which grabs your ear’s attention more.
And that’s speed picking.
19/1/2012 Quick Update:
This is a little trick I use to help speed up my playing, but I clean forgot about it whilst writing the post originally. When I first pick up my guitar to practice, I actually use a thumb pick, as in the picture here.
It sticks out more than when I use a normal pick. In fact, I would say you can see about twice as much pick as I would normally use below my thumb there.
Why do I do this? Well playing with this for a few minutes while I warm up, forces me to be much more precise and accurate with my movements, and makes playing difficult. When I switch back to a normal plectrum, I find my playing is far more fluid and relaxed. Nowadays, I also do this before going on stage to play live, as anything that can relax you beforehand helps.
This was very interesting, I am going to have to print this off so that I can follow the steps you gave while playing. I don’t have a metronome but I can get one if that is what it takes to increase muscle memory and speed. I got a little confused by arpeggios what exactly is that? This was a very informative blog I have learned quite a bit.
You can get small electronic metronomes very cheaply from most music shops these days, for a few £s or $s. I don’t like using them, but they are a necessary tool sometimes.
An arpeggio is the sequence of notes used in a chord, but played one at a time, instead of all at once. You start with the lowest note, go up to the top, and back down again.
Is there a real purpose for speed picking? Are there songs that you have to learn how to do this for? I am not being disrespectful or anything I am genuinely curious because I just started playing the guitar recently. I have been following your blogs with the different equipment and things like the WAH pedal, you are very gifted when it comes to guitar knowledge and I hope you continue to share more information.
Speed picking is just another technique, which is mainly used for lead guitar work. If you have to do a run of notes quickly, that is what it’s for, (like in the video). On the whole, it’s not used for rhythm guitar unless you play thrash or heavy metal tunes where it’s pretty much obligatory.
Are you the same person that had the blog on the WAH pedal before Christmas? If so I just wanted to thank you, because of your blog I was able to buy one of these for my brother for Christmas and I was able to make an educate decision on which one to purchase. I have really enjoyed your blogs they have been extremely helpful in my guitar playing endeavors.
Yes, and thank you.
This is a technique that they don’t often teach in guitar lessons so I am glad that I ran across this blog. You have put a lot of information in this blog that otherwise would go unnoticed. I truly never knew that there were different ways to hold a pick and have it do different things. I always thought that the pick was just to keep your fingers from getting sore.
I’m just about to add an additional helpful hint to the post which concerns different picks. It’s a technique I use myself, but clean forgot to post it.
I just assumed that high speed playing is quite rehearsed. Afterall, you are playing a song or ballad that is prewritten, no? I thought all guitar playing is rehearsed because you are playing musical melody notes . Nevertheless, it is impressive to see such dexterity with one’s fingers. And when such amazing movements produce such a great guitar sound it becomes even more impressive, even for experienced electric guitar players who can themselves rock out to a solo.
Not all guitar playing is rehearsed, there is a large culture of improvisation on guitar, both acoustic and electric at venues from your local pub where they may have weekly jam sessions, to bands at the highest level. Generally, improvisation is usually limited to just soloing, but those who are better at it, can jam out whole songs together from scratch quite successfully in public. In fact “jamming” is an integral part of blues, folk and jazz music, so often times, tunes are not “pre-written” as you suppose. Also, sometimes people will start with a well known “pre-written” tune and will take it elsewhere in the musical landscape.
As for speed picking and improvisation, different guitarists have different views on this. Marty Friedman of Megadeth fame takes the view that in the studio you should write the very best solo you can, and therefore feels you should also play this live, so his solo’s are rehearsed, whereas people like Kirk Hammet and Slash will often play something different live, (except for certain very popular songs). Me personally, I prefer the latter, as I really enjoy hearing my fav bands doing something new, and after the gig I feel I’ve come away with something extra the CD didn’t have.
I was just reading a blog on bending the strings and making the guitar scream and the damage it can do to the machine head. Does speed picking fall into that category as well? I guess if you are making a guitar scream you have to be picking pretty fast right? Do you agree that you need to oil the machine heads periodically to try and prevent breakage?
I’m really not sure what you’ve been reading, but it sends like horse**** to me. Pulling string bends does not wear out or damage machine heads, especially as if you do pull a string too hard, it simply snaps. And no, machine heads do not need oiling regularly, in fact many are sealed for life these days, and besides they work on friction, they’re not suppose to slip. In terms of oil and wear though – they just don’t get used enough.
Just to prove the point, let’s say you play very regularly and need to change strings every month. Unwinding the string, maybe 3 or 4 turns, and then winding the new one on, maybe another 3 or 4 turns. Hey let’s say that’s ten in total, (no my maths isn’t bad, let’s just say for error). Now multiply by 12 for a year, and then 20 for another 20 years. So the machine head would be turned 2,400 times. Sounds like a lot? Well a car does that many revs in 3 minutes at idle. OK, so the car needs oil, but then it will be generating enough horsepower to shift something weighing 1,500 kilos. So there’s quite a bit more strain there than merely two fingerpower. Also, a car could run quite happily from cold for 3 minutes with no oil, although I wouldn’t recommend this.
I watched your video there of Michael Angelo Batio and that guy is pretty amazing when it comes to speed picking and your right you can almost not see his fingers moving at times. I don’t even pretend that I will ever get that fast but I would like to learn how to get started on getting faster so I appreciate the technique that you have shared in your blog.
Give it a try. It’s not that hard to pick as fast as him (in short bursts at least!). MAB’s genius lies in being able to think this stuff up, and then play it flawlessly.
I have watched the video of that guy playing really fast and I ask my self why would you want to do that? Isn’t the whole idea of playing an instrument to make beautiful music and relax? You can’t tell me he is relaxed when he is playing that fast, and it isn’t exactly the prettiest music I’ve heard either. No offence to you or anyone else that is just my opinion is all.
I think you’re missing several points here. If you want to play that kind of music, then you need to learn to speed pick. If you wamt to play like BB King, the techniques used are entirely different, and speed picking is not one of them. As for beautiful music, each to their own. I happen to be a fan of BB king as well as this guy, and I hear the beauty in both styles of playing, but I didn’t pick this video because it was pretty, I picked it purely to illustrate the technique.
I understand your cynicism, buit I can assure you his fingers are most certainly relaxed, although his demeanour might not be. It’s just not possible to keep up that kind of speed for more than a short period without cramping up, unless you are relaxed. Don’t believe me, then try it yourself and see how your hands feel.
Can you pick up a metronome at any music store? I have seen them used for piano but I haven’t seen them used while playing a guitar so I wasn’t sure. I think your technique for increasing your speed a little bit at a time is the key to this and to being successful. You have to give your muscles time to get the movements down and the only way to do that is repetition.
You’re quite right, repitition is key, and yes, you can use mechanical metronomes just the same as you can for the piano.
The last rock concert I attended was way back in 1982, when I went to the Hollywood Sportatorium in south Florida to see Def Leopard perform during their Pyromaniac world tour. So I am not exactly used to seeing such an extended guitar solo. It seemed more like a marathon to me. It was impressive. What I am puzzled about is how the sound being produced always sounds faster than the hand that is picking the strings. Is this because each string pick produces an extended sound that you can break up with the other hand?
Not quite. It actually sounds faster if you pick each and every note. Also MAB is using delay on his sound, so technically there are a lot more notes than he’s actually playing.
That was a way cool video, man that guy is fast your right sometimes I don’t even think you can see his fingers move. I was just reading a blog that tells you what can happen if you play this way, how you have to keep the machine heads oiled or they lose their tune and sometimes break. I’m thinking that this kind of play will be something I do later on down the road.
Where ARE you guys getting this machine head stuff from?
This was very interesting and entertaining, that guy is amazing to say the least. I don’t play the guitar but to do something like that must take years of practice right? It is interesting that in order to increase your speed you have to do it gradually over a period of time to get your muscle used to making that motion. Very cool blog you did a great job.
I want to play like that some day, I doubt I’ll ever get that fast but I would love to try. Part of the fun is the challenge right? I don’t have a metronome but I’ll be getting one so I can try this increasing speed exercise. Thank you for the tips I’ll let you know how it goes after awhile. Will you be posting any more information on this topic in the future?
Glad to help. I don’t think there’s a lot more to say about speed picking by itself, but I will be writing about other techniques that you can combine into your playing, such as 2 hand tapping, arpeggios and a bit more about improvising solos.
I’ve heard a lot of people do this speed picking, granted none of them where as fast as this guy, but even with how fast they were there were times that you couldn’t keep up. I think this is a fun blog and I am going to give it a try. In all honesty I’ve never been interested but after watching your video and reading how you train yourself I think it would be fun.
Yes, I kind of learnt this out of necessity originally. As a younger man, I was sometimes terrified of going on stage with a particular band I was in, because I could play all the songs in practice sessions, but live, everyone else was so nervous, when they kicked into the first song, all that nervous energy was immediately converted into extra speed. Often they upped the tempo to a point I just couldn’t play at, which was highly embarrassing at times. Anyway, a combination of buying them all a stiff drink or 2 beforehand and learning to speed pick helped me get past that one.
I never really thought about giving this a try but I think it was because I didn’t know how to increase my speed and it was a little scary. With your blog and the way you easily described how to increase your speed in a very easy way now I am interested. Is it a good idea to make sure your machine head is oiled really good the faster you get?
Erm, no.
You make this sound so easy to just increase your speed over time. But it does make sense that you have to do the same thing over and over for the muscle memorization. I used to teach martial arts and that was the whole purpose of practice exercises and doing the same move over and over again, the kids hated it until they went to tournament. Your blog is great.
Ah, martial arts. Yes, it is exactly the same technique, and yes, it isn’t difficult. You just have to have the patience to repeat the exercise enough times until it becomes 2nd nature.
This was a great blog you did an excellent job instructing over the internet. Have you ever thought about giving guitar lessons over the internet as a way of making an income? You seem to really know what you’re talking about and the was you go through things step by step makes it easy to follow. I’ve learned a lot from you in just this blog thanks, I look forward to your next blog.
Thank you. I may give some lessons in the future, but there are a lot of people out there doing the same thing, so I’ll have to work out my own unique plans first I think.
Pingback: Your Questions About Tapping Technique Guitar