The primary goal of learning scales on guitar is not to increase your speed.
Rather, it is to have a toolbox of patterns, proven effective by countless great musicians before us, from which to create music. The guitar scale exercises in this lesson show how to do this: turn scales into melodies.
That being said, scales also make the perfect exercises to practice on if you want to play the guitar fast.
Here are some reasons why building speed through practicing scales is very effective:
- Scales and arpeggios form the foundation of most music, including fast shredding. As a result, when you learn how to play scales quickly, you are developing muscle memory for finger motions that you will encounter in real musical situations. Scales are thus more effective than chromatic exercises (1-2-3-4 or spider exercises) because most music is not chromatic.
- Learning how to play scales fast improves their understanding, making them more useful for music making.
- When I first started working on using speed in my original guitar music, one of the issues was “what notes to play”. Scales (and arpeggios) provide the answer to that question. The better you know your scales, the less you’ll have to worry about finding the right notes when shredding.
If I have convinced you that learning how to play your scales fast is worth your time, let’s get into how to do it.
Step 1: Memorize the scale
Before starting to build speed on any scale it is important that you have it memorized first.
You may choose any scale, or you can memorize the D minor natural pattern I will be using as an example in this lesson.
To be able to play scales fast you also need to use the efficient picking motions. I find directional picking the most efficient way to pick. You can learn more about this type of picking here.
The picking directions are given in this example below.
Step 2: Measure your top speed
Since our goal is to increase speed, we need to measure it first.
Play the scale with a metronome and find the fastest speed at which you can play it accurately and on time on a consistent basis.
This is the maximum speed at which the scale can be played correctly, and it is the one we want to increase.
Write it down (in bpm) and forget about it for the time being.
We’ll be going through a process that will increase this speed when you come back to it.
During this process you will be playing at different tempos. In most cases you will be playing the scale at a slower speed, but in steps 9 and 10, you may even go faster than this speed.
Each of the following steps should be repeated several times to develop the necessary muscle memory to increase speed.
Unless specified otherwise, the exercises in each step should be practiced both with and without a metronome.
Step 3: Double picking
The first thing we’ll do with the scale is double pick it, which means playing each note twice.
This adds new challenges to playing the scale while also improving your two-hand synchronization, which is a critical element for developing speed.
Step 4: Triplets
In this step we’ll play each note three times, using triplets as a rhythmic pattern.
Step 5: Upward picking
In this step, you simply play each note with an upstroke.
Because we use more downstrokes than upstrokes in regular playing, downstrokes are naturally practiced more frequently.
Thus, when you play scales (or exercises, licks, riffs, etc.) using only upstrokes, you’re training muscles that aren’t used very often, which will help you play faster when you switch back to regular picking.
Step 6: Scale sequences
Sequencing a scale is a tool to learn the scale better. Sequences force you to make finger motions you wouldn’t do if you were playing the scale serially, which gives you a lot of ideas for improvisation.
They also help you play scales faster, since you come to know them more thoroughly and the added complexity will make the scale feel easier when played in a serial pattern.
Here are two examples of sequencing the D minor scale.
Sequence of 3: 1,2,3 – 2,3,4 – 3,4,5 – etc
Sequence of 4: 1,2,3,4 – 2,3,4,5 – 3,4,5,6 – etc
Step 7: Strong pick attack
The next step is simple, yet very effective when it comes to building speed.
Pick each note with as much strength as possible (as long as you don’t hit adjacent notes).
This will force you to play the scales slower and has the following benefits:
- Playing the scale with the usual pick attack will feel easier, thus you’ll be able to play it faster.
- Picking notes very strongly improves your two hand synchronization. When your hands are perfectly synchronized your left hand finger is pressing the note at exactly the same time that you’re hitting the string with the pick. Playing the note slightly before or after one should, reduces both the quality of the note, and the speed at which you can play.
Step 8: Accents
In the next step we’ll be playing around with pick attack once again but this time we won’t be picking every note as hard as we could – only the ones we want accented.
The following are some accent exercises you can apply to the scale that you’re using. The symbol > above a note means that you should accent it, that is, to pick it more strongly than the notes surrounding it.
Step 9: Fragment exercises
In the following step, rather than playing the scale all at once you will play loops made of fragments of the scale.
Playing a fragment over and over enables you to learn that specific part at a faster speed than that of the full scale.
The following are a few examples of scale fragments derived from D minor.
Step 10: Play it as fast as possible (with mistakes)
In this step you’re going to play the scale as fast as possible, without a metronome, and as long as the scale is recognizable, with some mistakes along the way.
After each time you play the scale, stop for a few seconds and think:
What are the main mistakes or imperfections of this run?
After doing this for a few times you may start recognizing spots where you keep making the same mistakes. If that’s the case, repeat the previous step by creating scale fragments around the area of the repetitive mistake, until you fix it.
Step 11: Play it slower, perfectly and with a metronome
In this step you should slow down again until you can play the scale perfectly.
Check that you can play it correctly with a metronome, and then keep increasing the speed until you cannot play it perfectly anymore.
Step 12: Take metronome marking again
If you have gone through the process given above, by now you should know the scale thoroughly and from every aspect – left hand motions, right hand motions, two hand synchronization, how it sounds, etc.
If you take the metronome marking of the fastest speed at which you can play it perfectly now, it should be significantly higher than the one you measured in step 2.
A final note on speed
Playing the guitar fast is fun and has more benefits than the obvious ones like impressing your friends.
It makes playing slow feel easier, and allows you to put in as many notes as you want to build intensity and reach climaxes.
However, if you approach speed the incremental way – playing something (scale, lick, exercise etc) a thousand times at a certain bpm, then increasing it by a few bpm, and repeating the process over and over, your gains will be slow.
You can build speed this way, but by creating a set of exercises around the item you’re playing (as we’ve done through these steps) and improving in these different areas separately, you will build speed faster, and enjoy benefits that come with the exercises, which can then be applied to other areas of guitar playing.
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