Guitar Speed Exercise No. 4

Guitar Speed Exercise No. 4




In the last article, we were talking about a variation
of the chromatic run. A small change had been made to
the standard version of the chromatic, that brought
about renewed finger work for the fretting hand,
and unfamiliarity in the picking hand.

I have put a lot of emphasis on the necessity for
keeping finger and picking activities fresh.

The reason for this stands strong. If you want to
develop the best style with the guitar, that you
possibly can, you have to stay on it. You have to
really think about ways to constantly improve your
playing. If you make this your mindset, then you
won't get locked in to an understocked inventory
of riffs. That is important, because there is nothing
more frustrating than playing the same passages or
chords for months or even years on end.

Keep in mind that it happens to the best of us.
This all sounds like a lot of work. The truth
is, that if you discipline your mind before your
hands, you will find that there is very little
work involved. It is EASY to develop speed or
master any technique. I use body building as
a reference quite a bit, but both are the same.
You are improving yourself.

In the case of body building, body builders want
more mass, but they know that gorging yourself
three times a day like most people do, is not
going to help you gain mass by eating.
Instead, they eat throughout the day, a little
here and a little there.

The same is applied to practicing guitar.
Ten minutes here, ten minutes there. There is
no need to do too much at once, unless you really
are having fun with it. In my case, I use to
practice 16 hours a day. That's very extreme,
but for those two years that I was hell bent
on doing that, I really enjoyed it and have
no regrets. If you can practice for 45 minutes
to an hour a day, on and off again, you'll be
just fine.

So, getting back to what I was saying (sorry), we took
a very important step with alteration of the last
chromatic. We set it up, so that instead of playing
in a box formation, we started making the move
into connecting notes all across the fretboard.

We're going to take another bold step, starting now.




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