Fast Guitar Picking - Bad Habits That Could Be Holding You Back

It's one thing to have incredibly fast fingers on the fret board

, but you need an equally fast guitar picking hand to do some real damage in a solo. When you watch a professional guitarist closely, their picking hand is almost in a machine-like blur that moves fluently with the fret fingers.

It looks pretty amazing and you'll be able to pull it off too someday with practice and determination, but there might be some things right now that you're doing to your technique to hold you back. Here's a list of things you might be doing that can limit your ability to improve on fast guitar picking.

1. You're just too tense.

There are a lot of very rigid guitarists out there who move in a very tense manner and they're only preventing themselves from improving. Learn to loosen up and have a comfortable grip on the pick when you play so you can reach your maximum speed.

2. You use too many muscles.

A lot can be put into your fast guitar picking action, but you might be doing more than you need. Realistically, the movement of your wrist and fingers and the tiniest bit of your forearm will suffice.

If you add any other muscles into the mix like shoulders or something, you're doing too much.

3. You hold the guitar pick with too many fingers.

Using too many fingers on the guitar pick applies to the issue of having tense muscles. With less fingers holding onto the guitar pick, you're allowing the muscles in your hand to loosen and move with fewer encumbrances.

4. If your guitar is on the strap, you might have it hanging too low.

Stereotypical grunge players like to have their guitars hanging well below their waste so they can hold up this dark image of hanging low when they play, but it's bad practice for playing fast. For fast guitar picking, you want your guitar hanging at your waist at the very least so your picking hand and fret hand have plenty of space to move without straining.

5. You hold your pick too far away from the tip.

The more control that you can put on your guitar pick, the easier it is to speed up the motion. Grab your pick a little closer to the tip near the strings the next time you play and you should have a bit more authority on the speed of your picking.

6. You're not double-picking, but only using down strokes.

Without learning how to double-pick by striking the strings by moving both up and down, you're really keeping yourself in the amateur leagues. Every time that you have a long string of notes or chords, you can double your fast guitar picking by going up and down.

It's best to resolve these bad habits early before they turn into something that may take weeks or months to get rid of. Remember these tips the next time you have some fast picking to do and you should be hitting new speeds soon.

by: Kyle Hoffman

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