Chords for The Speed Picking Secret

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Okay, that was not very musical and yet the least musical things may sometimes reveal
the ultimate truths.
Who am I, like, Guitar Buddha or something?
Okay, so, speed picking.
If you want to really get an in-depth review of [G] speed picking, check out Troy Grady's YouTube channel.
He goes way more in-depth into it and he's a lot better than I am.
However, I do know a couple things, so I'm going to show you what I think is the most
important takeaway if you want to kind of improve your picking speed or get faster
at alternate picking runs, things like that.
There's one thing.
It's very simple, but it's also a little bit difficult to implement if you've never thought
about it before.
Let me show you.
So, the real secret to speed picking, in my opinion, _ is [Ab] efficiency of movement.
And that means two things.
How far your fingers move away from the fretboard as you ascend or descend along the guitar
neck, as well as how hard you physically press on the frets.
The goal is to press the strings with your fretting hand with the minimum power possible
in order to get the sound that you're looking for.
Being aware of the minimal pressure needed in order to make the notes sound [G] out is going
to help you glide across the strings very quickly because your fingers won't be working
as hard, they won't be as tense, and they'll be a lot more loosey-goosey.
See if you can hear the difference between a hard down press and a minimal press.
[C] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _
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[Ab] So it's not the easiest thing to pick up if you're not listening for it, but I promise
you if you work on pressing the strings down at the minimal force [G] needed to make the notes
sound nice and juicy, it's going to go [Eb] a long way to improving your picking speed.
Now, we're going to get to the second piece of this, [Em] which is the economy of [Eb] movement,
moving your fingers as little as possible away from the fretboard as you play through an exercise.
So, let's take the worst exercise possible because, as I mentioned earlier in the video,
it actually is one of the best exercises for going over this [N]
technique. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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_ [Ab] _ _ [F] _ _ _ _ _
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[E] I warned you, it wasn't a [G] very fun exercise to listen to, but there is a little nuance
here that I want you to work on in this exercise in particular, and it is this movement from
string to string, fret to fret.
In my experience teaching people how to pick in general, what your tendency is [Gm] is for your
fingers to actually move away from the frets as you ascend or descend.
So I've seen [A] people like this.
_ [Bb] _ _ _ _ [C] _
_ [Db] _ _ _ [Eb] _ _ _ _
[Bb] Working on [G] minimizing the distance that your fingers [Ab] come off the fretboard is going to
[Gb] vastly improve your economy of movement and thus your picking speed.
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_ [A] _ _ _ _ _ [E] So you saw ascending, and the same [G] goes for descending.
When you're coming [Gb] down, your tendency might be to [Eb] do _ _ [Am]
something like that.
And I will say, [Ab] descending, it is a little [Abm] bit more difficult to keep your fingers flush
with the neck.
What I tend to do is keep my fingers grounded so even though my hand muscle kind of moves
my finger out involuntarily, I actually am still hovering my finger over the [Gb] next place
it's supposed to go.
So that can be kind of an ulterior end result for you.
If you're having trouble with this concept, think about [G] targeting [Ab] the next area of the
fret with your fingers. _ _
_ [Eb] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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_ [G] Really, you can play anything fast if you practice it enough.
Have a little bit of discipline, start slow, use a metronome.
I recommend backing tracks also for a little bit more musicality in your practice.
As far as this particular terrible chromatic exercise, just use it for like five minutes a day.
You'll see drastic improvement, I promise, and when you hit the plateau that you're looking
for, throw that exercise out, you don't need it anymore.
It's done what it came to do.
So I hope this was an eye-opening lesson for you guys if you needed it.
And until next time, keep [E] shredding.
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[E] _ _ _ _ [Em] _ _ _ [C] _
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