3 Reasons Why You Aren’t Developing Virtuoso Guitar Speed

If you read Part 1 of this article, you already understand the tremendous importance of developing your 2 hand synchronization so you can play guitar faster and cleaner than you ever have. The next step is to learn the 3 main reasons WHY most guitar players never achieve perfect 2 hand synchronization in their guitar playing and how you can avoid these mistakes:

Your Hands Move Slowly Or Lazily When You Practice At Slow Tempos

If you are allowing your hands to move slowly or lazily when playing notes, you are making a tremendous mistake. Many guitar players assume that just because they are practicing at a slow tempo, they need to slow down the movements of their hands. These 2 things are not the same at all (more on this below).

Most guitarists wrongly believe that when they are practicing at slow tempos, they need to move their hands slowly as well. While slow hand movements ARE necessary sometimes, using them incorrectly will severely hurt your ability to perfectly synchronize your hands in 1 of 2 ways:

1. Your pick hits the string at a different time than the fretting hand does. This makes your playing sound sloppy, cripples your ability to synchronize your hands, and makes it impossible to play guitar fast.

2. Your hand’s sloppy movements create unwanted string noise on either side of the note you’re playing. Examine Figure A:

This illustrates how slow or lazy hand motions affect your technique. Note that there are sloppy noises at both the beginning and end of each note. This is where your hands aren’t in sync.

So how do you fix this problem? It’s actually pretty simple. Move your hands quickly when playing each note but also make sure each note sustains for a long time. Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean you increase the tempo of the exercise! Simply by moving your hands faster for each note, you create space in between the notes. Now examine Figure B:

This clearly shows how much your 2 hand synchronization will improve when you increase the speed of your pick attack. The sloppy noise that previously surrounded every note you played is completely gone, and your hands are much more in sync with each other.

You Aren’t Using The Most Efficient Picking Technique For Guitar

Greatly increasing the efficiency of your guitar playing is crucial when developing your 2 hand synchronization. Achieve this by doing these 2 things:

1. Implement directional picking in your guitar playing instead of alternate picking. The biggest problem with alternate picking is you kill your picking hand’s momentum when switching between strings. Directional picking solves this problem by allowing you to efficiently USE the momentum your picking hand already has when changing between strings. This makes it much easier to play guitar fast. Learn more about why directional picking is the best picking technique for fast guitar playing.

2. Increase the smoothness and steadiness of your guitar picking motions. Most guitar players have one hand that is more coordinated than the other (typically it’s the fretting hand). This results in sloppy playing and out-of-sync hands. You can fix this imbalance by focusing on making your picking motions smoother (particularly when going between strings). For example, your picking hand should make only ONE motion (without stopping) when changing strings in a 3-note-per-string scale exercise.

Watch this free video to learn how to improve your picking motions and start playing guitar faster and cleaner.

You Aren’t Tracking Your Guitar Playing Progress The RIGHT Way

One of the biggest things you can do to improve your guitar playing is to start effectively tracking the progress you make. Most guitarists have no idea how to do this. However, those who do reach virtuosic levels in their technique much faster (and have more fun doing it!).

Start tracking your guitar playing progress in the most effective and efficient way possible so you experience huge improvements in your guitar playing.

Understanding the 3 main reasons why guitarists struggle to improve their 2 hand synchronization is a great first step, but to see truly massive results in your playing you need to learn all the OTHER elements that enable you to become a virtuoso guitarist. Instead of constantly struggling to increase your guitar speed (no matter how much you practice), learn how to double your guitar speed (literally!) while simultaneously cutting your practice time in half.