How To Play Guitar Fast

This article all about the things you must do in order to learn how to play guitar fast! If you follow the included tips in this article as well as read the other lessons I link to on my site, you will learn to play guitar in the least amount of time possible. Also, as the title of this article suggests, I will list some tips on how to learn to play guitar fast as in speed.

Dedicate time to play

Set aside 20 minutes a day, everyday, minimum to learning to play guitar. If you can do more than 20 minutes a day, great! The more the better. But make sure you use your practice time wisely. You need to dedicate at least 20 minutes of physically moving/using your hands during practice in order to build hand strength and dexterity.

Learn in small steps

Guitar playing consists of many different aspects. Learning to play guitar is not that difficult if your learning consists of small manageable steps. No matter how much you learn, there will always be the need to practice what you know. Learn things and learn them well through continuous practice. Start with bite size chunks and improve on them through repetition. Start small and work towards stringing the things you know together into a larger framework. And...you need to follow a plan...

Learning to play guitar is easy with a plan

Before diving into learning anything, including guitar, it's important that you have a clear understanding what you want to achieve. It's good practice to outline, plan or map out what you want to do to help you stay focused and complete your mission. The good news is I have already listed a ton of topics (below) you can use to add to your plan. Get a notebook and make a plan. Dedicate your practice time on each of the topics in it until you are confident that you know them. Split your practice time in half. In the first half, practice what you already know and in the second half, learn something new. Start with the basics and increase your knowledge one small step at a time.

Beginner guitar basics

Familiarize yourself with the parts of the guitar, how to tune a guitar and basic hand movements and playing posture.

Guitar Parts
How to hold the guitar
How to tune a guitar

Learn basic music terminology, notes of the fretboard, start learning scales, beginner guitar chords and strumming.

How to read Guitar TABs
Learn notes of the guitar fretboard
Guitar chords for beginners.
Intervals
How to read music

Learn to play scales

Scales are the backbone of music. Without them you wouldn't know what to play. So learn them and learn them well!

Learn how to play scales for the absolute beginner
How to memorize Major and minor scales.
The modes
Pentatonic scales
Harmonic minor scales

Learn all about guitar chords

Guitar chords are essential to music as well. There would be no harmony without them.

How to read chord charts
Beginner Guitar Chords
Chord Construction Part 1 Learn How To Build Guitar Chords
Triad inversions
Chord construction - 7th Chords and beyond
Chords that occur in a key
Learn all about chord progressions

Learning to play with speed

Learning all the required information you need to play guitar can be done pretty fast, but learning to play with speed can take years. But with practice and dedication you can play at high speeds. As promised, here is my list of tips to help you become a faster guitar player.

* Go slow - This might seem a little contradictory but in order to go fast you have to learn to play everything at a slow speed first. You have to learn to crawl before you can walk and you have to learn to walk before you run. Going slow builds precision and accuracy. Once you can play slow you can then work on increasing your speed.
* Use economy of motion. Which means make all your hand movements be as small as only necessary to play something.
* Play to a beat with a gradual increase in tempo or a metronome and stay in time with it. Slowly build up to high speeds.
* Have your chords, scales and licks thoroughly mastered. You can't expect to increase your speed without knowing how to play these things well to begin with.
* Make sure your guitar has low action. It's nearly impossible to play fast on a guitar whose strings are too high off the fretboard.
* Make sure there are no other hindrances about your guitar that will cause your hands to get hung up. Your neck should be smooth, frets in good condition and new strings so that your hands have the ability to slide around with ease.
* Never sacrifice feel for the sake of speed. What I mean by this is, don't play just for the sake of speed. That usually doesn't sound very good. Nobody wants to listen to 1000 notes per second. Playing fast should be phrased just right so it sounds good in a musical sense. So learn how to phrase things. Phrasing is playing the guitar so that it sounds as if there is a conversation going on within the music you play. Musical lines should have a question and answer type of feel to them.
* Perfect your technique before trying to do them at high speeds. Be sure your bends, slides, vibrato, string switching, picking and everything else sound good slow. Sounding good slow ensures bad habits don't carry over into your high speed playing.
* Increase your finger speed, accuracy and coordination! Learn to type on a a keyboard to increase your muscle memory. Take a typing test to see how fast you currently are and then practice!
* Never give up! There will be times you feel like you have reached a plateau. You will get frustrated. You will question yourself. But never, ever give up...you can do this!

Advancing as a guitarist

* Playing music with other musicians is one of the best ways to improve as a guitarist. You will learn so much more from the people you play with.
* Research other music styles.
* Read books or watch videos on music theory.
* Try learning some cool guitar tricks.
* Learn some common strumming patterns
* Learn about Song structure and writing songs.
* Stay up to date with sites like reddit/r/guitarlessons and new videos posted to Youtube.
* Perfect your technique and write licks. File TABs for the licks you write in a folder so you will never forget them.
* Dissect other guitarist's technique to figure out what makes it tick. Then try to incorporate some of that into your own playing.
* Record yourself and criticize your playing. You are your own best critic.

Summary

Learning to play guitar is a satisfying achievement. It does take some time and you can do it. You can however, cut the time it takes to learn how to play in half if you stay focused and follow a plan. I will update this post with relevant links to more topics you can add to your plan as they come available. But until then, start making your plan and following it to see results fast.