You can learn how to play fast!
Learning guitar involves many elements. From understanding scales and harmony to mapping out the fretboard, as well as studying songs—there’s a lot to consider.
I’ve spent years teaching guitar, writing college courses, and eventually creating the step-by-step courses you’ll find here at SpyTunes.
Sometimes, before they even start, students reach out with various questions about what they’ll learn. But after we discuss all the aspects, what they often really want to know is:
Will I learn to play fast if I take the course?
The short answer: Yes, you will.
The slightly longer answer: Yes, you absolutely will—and it’s easier than you might think!
To learn how to play fast, all it takes is understanding the process and then committing to regular practice. The key is consistency.
If you’re an intermediate player, expect noticeable progress in about six months with consistent practice.
Now, let’s explore what it takes to play really, really fast.
The Secret of Speed is Accuracy
Accuracy is the key to building speed on the guitar. It might sound like a cliché, but it’s absolutely true:
Speed is a side effect of accuracy!
What this really means is that if you lose accuracy, you won’t be able to increase your speed effectively.
For this, I rely on a simple chromatic exercise. Assuming you’re already comfortable with the basics, let’s dive straight into chromatic exercise 7.
Start by Burying the Click
At first glance, this might seem easy, and it may be hard to see how playing so little, with so much space, will help improve your speed.
The trick is, when you play this, you need to play exactly in time with the click. Not a little bit before or after, but right on the click.
In fact, you should aim to play so precisely that the click itself becomes undetectable. This is often referred to as “burying the click.”
Once you’ve mastered this, try changing the tempo—both slower and faster. Remember, it’s not about speed right now, it’s all about accuracy and burying that click.
To do this, you must play with absolute focus using a metronome. If you find yourself flamming with the click, take a short break, then try again.
When the tempo gets ridiculously fast, try playing chromatic exercise 1 instead, with a slight modification. Here’s the basic version:
Playing staccato
In chromatic exercise 1, you have one more note to fit in, and in the video lesson, you’ll hear that this is played legato. Let’s scrap that for now.
Instead of playing with even 8th notes, make each note as short as possible, leaving rests between every hit. To achieve this, ease the pressure of your fretting hand immediately after each note. Don’t let the notes bleed into each other at all.
However, for the note that falls on the click, ensure it is absolutely spot-on. You shouldn’t even hear the click anymore.
Once again, vary the tempo—slower and faster—keeping the focus on accuracy, not speed. In the beginning, it’s not about breaking speed records; it’s all about precision and burying that click.
Playing in short bursts
Once you’ve mastered burying the click, it’s time to move on to the second part of improving your speed: playing in short bursts.
In this video, you’ll find two 16th notes followed by an 8th note rest. Your goal is to bring this exercise up to speed quickly. Again, the note that falls on the beat should bury the click.
Now that the concept is understood, focus on the 16th notes in this exercise. In exercise 9, you’ll play three 16th notes before taking a rest.
Remove 16th notes
It might seem tempting to play a string of 16th notes at this point, but that wouldn’t be ideal for building speed.
Instead, we continue attacking different 16th notes while maintaining the rests. This is crucial, as it keeps your focus on playing in short bursts of speed.
In exercise 51, you’ll rest the 8th note first, followed by two 16th notes. Now, you should hear the click clearly as it falls just after you’ve played your last note. This is definitely more challenging than the previous exercises.
Exercise 52: Play Three 16th Notes
In exercise 52 (check the playlist above), we play three 16th notes. Whenever the rests appear, you should still hear the click.
Make sure the click aligns perfectly with your 16th notes. It should sound like an even stream of notes, with the first one being the click, and the next three being your notes.
How to Build Shredding Speed
As long as you do the following:
- Bury the click with your accuracy.
- Play in short bursts.
The only thing left is regular practice.
How often, you ask? Every day is a great plan, but not for more than 10-20 minutes per session. If you want quicker results, you could consider two short sessions a day.
What definitely won’t work is practising this only once a week.
The best way to think about becoming a fast player is to compare it to how athletes train. They practice every day, measure their progress, and keep going. This is just as true for developing speed on the guitar.
I typically avoid comparing sports to music since you can’t measure success in the same way, but when it comes to speed, the similarities are striking. You’ll need discipline, consistency, and tracking your progress.
And remember, speed isn’t everything. If you focus too much on accuracy and speed over everything else, you risk becoming stiff and unmusical in your playing.
That said, it’s still nice to be able to play fast. It’s a satisfying box to tick. At the very least, having the confidence that speed won’t be a problem for you can be a huge confidence boost.
In the step-by-step courses, I go into more depth about how the chromatic exercise can help you become a more accurate and faster player, and how to vary them for continued progress.
If playing fast is important to you, I recommend taking four new steps a week from the course, along with practising the chromatic exercises every day in sessions of no more than 20 minutes.
Before you get started, a word of warning…
When to stop practising chromatic guitar exercises – RSI
It would be irresponsible of me to talk about speed practice without addressing RSI (repetitive strain injury).
Some students get so caught up in these exercises, as they are efficient and produce results quickly, that they end up practising too much. If you do this, you risk injuring yourself. Think of it like taking your fingers to the gym—do that too often or for too long, and you may cause harm.
Once you develop RSI, it won’t go away easily, and it can be a disaster for your playing.
Here are my top five tips for avoiding RSI:
- Ensure the room you’re practising in isn’t too cold.
- Warm up by playing slowly and relaxed.
- Sit in a comfortable position.
- Avoid carrying anything heavy before or after practising, as it could stretch the tendons.
- Stop immediately if you feel pain.
Follow these guidelines, and you’ll soon be playing with blistering speed. But remember, balance is key—practice other aspects of guitar playing too.
While being Usain Bolt on guitar is impressive, it’s not everything.
The best way to learn guitar is through songs, digging deep into the details of each one. From there, you can develop exercises related to the songs you’re playing.
This is exactly what we’ll do when you sign up for the course. Nothing stops you from learning to play fast too—just set aside time for it in your daily routine, and it will happen.
Play Guitar Fast | Related Pages
How To Play Guitar
In one of the first video series I made back in 2007, you’ll learn how chord shapes connect to pentatonic scales—watch the How To Play Guitar series to get started.
Discover how to use modes to follow chord changes. Understanding intervals and applying them in context will improve your ability to phrase and play musically.
