question for guitar teachers (Am I doing it right?)

[Relaxation]

Ey! What's up? Anyway, I just want to ask something from the guitar teachers out there. Since I'm still on the process of building speed with my alternate picking technique, I'm really putting time into one exercise. I'm really trying to speed it up so I usually spend an hour just trying to be comfortable with form at a given tempo. How much time would you guys recommend spending on an exercise if you are still building speed?

[Guitarperson88]

I would recommend maybe 1/4 of your practice time, all though this can vary, i practice 2 hours a day, so in my case i'd work on it for 30 minutes.

[Vilesilencer]

The answer depends on your goals. In my experience, coordination is not well attained by working a three note per string pattern at any particular speed for an hour. If you cant play at the speed your metro is set to, you're wasting your time and need to turn it down a few notches, not spend an hour frantically trying to match it. That sort of "chasing the beat" has its place is building speed, but you probably dont want to spend an hour doing it.

Even if you can play the exercise at the speed your metro is set to, you shouldnt play said exercise for an hour. Thats like doing five-hundred crunches a day and expecting a six-pack. Unless your a Zen Master, your brain is going to wander and you're mind-muscle is going to fade away. IMO, the truth is, boring practice is less productive. Instead of one exercise for an hour, how about 10 exercises for ten minutes each? Just like performing many exercises in the gym for a particular muscle, you must perform many different exercises on the fretboard for a particular technique.

Exceptions to this idea are A) The "exercise" is actually a piece of music, maybe some violin concerto for your shredding needs? This will be much less repetitive than a strict exercise or B) If you really just in that phase where you want to play faster than Yngwie and write boring fast solos over terrible songs or C) If you're spending five hours a day practicing, including some ear training, legato work, sweep picking, chordal ideas, etc.

Hope that helps a little.

[oRg]

One thing that you may want to do is instead of doing the normal 3nps AP thing do 4nps AP and some chromatics. These help build your chops fast IMHO. They worked for me and I still use them. They really help build coordination between left and right hand. For me the thing that worked easily was doing the 4nps excersize first, then moving to the 3nps, then 2nps and then finally end it with some sweeping arpeggios. This helped build my shred techniques fast. I attached a powertab of some of the 4nps excersizes I do whenever I practice, I uploaded this file before but this time I added a few extra licks that I think sound fun with some effects. I also recommend learn a faster yet classical piece like a Paganini song or something.