Techniques before Scales

Before starting with scales i should have blogged about skill techniques first. Its worth mentioning that together with good scale practice, it is imperative that one should include techniques in every practice session. There's a lot of techniques to mention out there, I find it hard to choose one to start.

Let’s face it, our goal is always to go fast. If you are slow, chances are you’ll have problems when going fast. But when you are fast you have all the freedom to go slow. Speed is everything. And speed is built strongly on the foundation of techniques.

I couldn’t think of a much better way of starting techniques than to elaborate the use of tremolo picking exercise. Tremolo picking is when you hold on to one string and keep picking it alternately (meaning up and down stroke) the fastest you can. Go as fast as you can but make sure you don’t blur the notes nor sound sloppy. Make sure you synchronize your left fretting finger with your right picking finger or the other way around if you are a left handed person. If you sound like messing up with the notes, stop there and keep it at that clean note speed until you feel comfortable to go forward speed. If you cant really do it at that particular practice session then don’t be frustrated, it’s the most natural thing for every practicing guitarist. Make it the goal for the next practice session.

You may ask what is the connection between tremolo exercise and speed. Well, the reason for this is that by determining your tremolo speed you also determine your base speed. Your base speed is the fastest speed you can get using alternate picking. It is seemingly impossible to surpass your base speed in the real playing situation. Although you can employ sweep picking which is another fast technique, but it will almost certainly be the same as your base speed. The faster you can get on your targeted tremolo speed the higher the possibility of attaining that same speed on actual playing.

Practicing tremolo not only determines your base speed. You also prepare and condition yourself with one of the most used techniques in guitar speed picking, the alternate picking technique. Your left and right hand will also benefit from this through muscle memory development. By this I mean that through repitition in practice, the muscles tend to store the arm and finger motion. Ok, im wrong, it’s the brain that stores up the movements. As you reinforce those movements the brain system or shall we call it subconcious accomodates those motor skills to the degree of not having to think about the motion but acts automatically and appropriately with great ease and precision. Its like brushing your teeth of even speaking, you dont think about all the complex movements it just naturally comes out for it is stored in your brain.

I hope you now see the good thing about the tremolo exercise. Once again focus on attaining your desired speed. Don’t learn it overnight for frustration might overshadow you, just be patient. Once you feel you're in your highest speed and feel the need to get going, read my next blog for I will talk about some more technique stuff. But for the meantime, get your axe and start tremolo exercise. Remember make yourself always want to hear the notes. Rock on!!!