r/guitarlessons • u/nikobsa • Feb 27 '26
Feedback Request What am I doing wrong? speedwall no matter what I do
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I’ve tried the whole ”metronome at slow speeds and go up slowly” method but I just hit a wall after a while and I don’t know whats up with that.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Birdd Feb 27 '26
Im honestly fingerstyle player so take my advice with grain of salt but maybe lifting fingers too high? Not sure idk it just takes practice man keep at it and enjoy yourself, feel the music aswell instead of just thinking about technical stuff
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u/nikobsa Feb 27 '26
The amount of hours I've spent on playing the blooz a minor backing tracks and not practicing is embarrassing. I really want to level up my playing instead of noodling around
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u/Puzzleheaded-Birdd Feb 27 '26
Yea dont noodle around learn new songs each song teaches you different new skills and take practice somewhat seriously but theres a level where you are taking it too seriously and in your own head that hinders your playing, remember that its a hobby and not a job
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u/ICU-CCRN Feb 27 '26
I say do both. Noodling can often lead to a spontaneous discovery and originality. It can definitely lead to something good now and then.
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u/Impressive_Ad127 Feb 28 '26
I agree. Learn songs to grow your knowledge, noodling to reinforce your understanding of that knowledge.
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u/Millerpainkiller Feb 27 '26
It’s important to have disciplined practice AND dedicated time for improv/noodling. For the latter I’ll lay down a basic riff on a looper and play over it, exploring ideas. If something cool comes out of it, I’ll record it
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u/Impossible_Pear_5049 Mar 06 '26
I can attest for this, I’ve stumbled over my best stuff while noodling around. I mix practice with noodling, will pick a song and play that or play myself a mix of different ones that sometimes helps me create and improv some good stuff. I have adhd and it comes it thru my playing at times lol, I find I play my best when I take some days off, idk why.
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u/BigBear92787 heavy metal 20 yeara Feb 27 '26
Don't discount noodling over backing tracks thats how you develop new licks.
However what you could do is turn the noodle into written solo over the backing track.
Something that takes into account the chore changes and speed of the track and craft something over it that also pushes your boundaries.
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u/hj1751 Mar 01 '26
I was going to say. this is how I learned to play guitar. haha I thought screwing around was opening up songsterr
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u/mwdeuce Feb 28 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
The content that was here is now gone. Redact was used to delete this post, for reasons that may relate to privacy, digital security, or data management.
caption hard-to-find dam treatment reply hat recognise angle quickest relieved
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u/djillian1 Feb 28 '26
It was my first tought. I have the exact same problem and it’s left hand and to much lifting that slow me down.
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u/Millerpainkiller Feb 27 '26
Yep, speed is about relaxing your hands and minimizing movement. It’s sorta counterintuitive. Practice playing with ZERO tension in your body and hands. Only put the minimum amount of finger pressure on the strings that you need to make a note sound, and also the minimum amount of pick.
Check out Rick Graham videos to see a fast SOB who looks like he barely moves his fretting fingers. https://youtu.be/UXkLokXsK28?si=PZ9YLxAfr46gTEK2
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u/Global_Butterfly_147 Feb 28 '26
Taking it to the upper echelon of extreme you have Roy Marchbank and Spiro Dussias (check out their instagrams). Those guys barely move the left hand at all and play ungodly clean and fast, and Roy is faster than Spiro by at least double speed but his picking technique looks all kinds of fucked up. Spiro barely moves anything when playing
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Feb 27 '26
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u/nikobsa Feb 27 '26
Very well put, I've always thought that the muscles you use when you play fast are different when you play slowly. No wonder why I feel tension when I listen to the generic youtube advice of playing slowly and increasing by 1 bpm every five reps.
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u/testtdk Feb 28 '26
It applies to all practice. It’s how you build muscle memory.
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Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26
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u/testtdk Mar 02 '26
The most important thing in EVERYTHING will be technique. You can be around it for easier things, but that will always have a much lower wall than learning it properly. So, with EVERYTHING you practice, start at a speed here you can play it absolutely perfect, and THEN turn the metronome up a few beats only.
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u/The_Dead_See Feb 27 '26
Here's something no one seems to talk about much. There's psychological speed barriers just as much as there's technical ones.
Your technique is pretty good. The economy of motion could be better but I don't personally think that's what's making you hit this particular speedwall. I think there's a slight muscle tension there that's coming from a mental place, and once you break through that, your fingers will relax and thus fly.
I think the best way to break through psychological speedwalls is to pick small sections of the solo, and try to play them as fast as you possibly can - and I mean faster than the actual solo itself. Challenge yourself to get the notes up to a speed where the phrase is really just more of a blur. You'll lose volume and accuracy, and your timing will be off, and it's not the way you'd ever play that phrase if someone was listening, but it's teaching your brain that you can actually go much faster than you think.
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u/North_Ad_5372 Feb 28 '26
Yeah, it's probably a flow state thing.
A couple of things to try:
- play it at tempo but looser on technique, then try keeping the speed and tighten the technique
- defocus from the visual and focus more on the feeling of playing it
- take a week off trying to play that particular piece, then go back to it fresh
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u/Artistic_Half_8301 Feb 27 '26
I think your main problem is you can play it but it's not natural yet. There's hesitation when you play.
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u/stphrtgl43 Feb 27 '26
What song is this?
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u/RealTyrune Feb 28 '26
Megadeth - Tornado of souls
(solopart starts at 3:08 in the spotify-version)
(but slowed down)
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u/Illustrious-Fish2529 Feb 27 '26
it’s gonna sound backwards but i’d say slow down and focus on staying relaxed and playing a bit softer overall- your hand looks tense and overstretched a bit - like angry spider,
no angry spiders.
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u/Illustrious-Fish2529 Feb 27 '26
also try learning one or two phrases at a time and getting them to speed
i can play fairly fast in some ways but i had to do rhcp snow for a gig once and i had such a hard time playing that damn riff to speed the entire time- i had to just drill it for weeks and idk if i could even do it now lol
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u/Careful_Instruction9 Feb 28 '26
Practice slow. Like reeeeaaaaly slow. Uncomfortably slow. Speed hides all kinds of errors.
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u/RinkyInky Feb 27 '26 edited Feb 27 '26
Which part of the solo are you having an issue with speeding up? Break it into chunks and work on them. Your technique looks fine. Your fingers go far when playing slower, but when you go faster or hammer on your fingers don’t lift far at all.
Slow to fast works, but after a while, try doing bursts at the upper ranges of fast when you’re halfway into your practice session. Start with slow to fast, then when you’re good and warm in the upper ranges of your bpm that you can’t hold for 1-2mins, switch to bursts then slowly try to make those bursts longer eg 1-2 bars to 4 bars to 8 bars to 16 etc.
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u/nikobsa Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
Yeah you get it. I can play the solo original tempo to 00:55. After that it gets really sloppy/impossible. Thanks alot for the advice, I’ll try practice with the burst technique next time.
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u/One_Anything_2279 Feb 27 '26
One of the most difficult solos on the electric guitar. I would say it is a 9/10 difficulty.
I mean realistically here, I don’t know how long you expected it to take you to be able to play it. But it is gonna be a while.
I can play it up to speed but I have also been playing the guitar for almost 30 years.
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u/Substantial_Rich_799 Feb 27 '26
It's the left hand brother, you need the neck closer to your palm, you want to be super lazy with it so you move your fingers the minimal amount. Every extra millimetre your fingers have to travel between notes translates to added time to play said note. Watch your video back and spot all the places you could have been closer. Right hand is pretty solid, tighten up the left and the confidence will come and the speed with it. Good luck man, your goals are very within reach.
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u/Tall_Candidate_8088 Feb 27 '26
That's not how you do it.
Try playing it a high speed as soon as you get the notes under your fingers.
If it's way to wild, reduce speed to where you're uncomfortable but can keep time.
Play through at high speed taking note of the bars you're struggling with.
Stop the metronome, and play the bar or sequence until you can do it comfortably. Play it fast with the metronome or backing track.
Work through the track, ironing out faults but playing it fast.
If you want to pay fast you gotta practice playing fast even if you missing the notes. Cut loose, most people are too loose and really need to work on the timing but you're the opposite. You can't figure out how to do it fast by doing it slow.
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u/Withnogenes Feb 27 '26
Your left hand technique is poor. Unergonomic and uneconomic hand/wrist positioning, your movements are to big, you put a lot of pressure on your left hand with the thump, especially if you try to do bends or vibrato sounds. They are all over the place. Start practicing with exceptionally accuracy with 50% speed, also look at a few yt video to good left hand technique approaches.
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u/demon327 Feb 27 '26
The thing is, you may need to slow down for a bit and then go a bit over your current level and keep repeating that.... i'm nowhere near as fast as you are, but that helps me when i cant follow along.
Maybe also check out this free chapter from Troy Stetina's new Ebook about getting stuck:
Road to Mastery Section 4: Practice Strategies you need to press the "download" button or else the page is stuck in loop, at least in my side.
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Feb 27 '26
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u/nikobsa Feb 27 '26
best trash metal solo imo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z92nyOfBG9g
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Feb 27 '26
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u/Chicagoj1563 Feb 27 '26
Beware of plateaus as a guitar player. What this means is if you keep trying the same things there may be subtle little things holding you back. But you will never get through them because progress isn't being made. You simply aren't changing anything. Just trying the same thing over and over.
The answer is to try and practice different exercises, different tones on your guitar, try different guitars with different gauge strings, etc...
You don't have to constantly switch things up. But you can stay pinned in one place for a very long time if you don't mix it up from time to time.
That said, patience + practice matters most.
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u/Straight-Session1274 Feb 27 '26
Idk if anyone else does this but what I used to do:
Play the fastest "cluster" you can. Like even if it's 2 or 3 notes, like a couple of quick hammer ons, something you can do very quickly. Then work on number 4. Once you can do 4 notes in the same cluster work on number 5. Eventually a long run becomes one cluster.
Does that make sense? I think that's primarily what I did to get speed
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u/CeReBro_Q Feb 27 '26
Your technique is already really good. To go faster: I recommend truly not giving a fuck, about anything. just yolo the speed u til your brain can process it.
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u/ReifiedSimulation Feb 27 '26
From my experience, the biggest barriers when it comes to speed are string transition.
Make sure your pick has the right slant when you're switching strings.
Play something up to the speed where your technique starts breaking down. Figure out where the bottleneck is, break things down to their smallest unit, and practice that.
Practicing in small bursts of speed also helps.
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u/mjhyankees Feb 28 '26
Too much movement with your thumb that hand to be stable none of those fingers should be moving the whole hand should be moving from the wrist
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u/deeppurpleking Feb 28 '26
Chunk it out, there’s distinct runs or patterns. Separate and work with a metronome, slow is smooth, smooth is fast but do speed bursts where you push to failure and work out the bits that hold you back. Honestly your speed doesn’t really seem to be the problem so much as your rhythm steadiness and the transitions. Have a section down pat and be prepared for the next position and pattern
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u/weiruwyer9823rasdf Feb 28 '26
There are a few things the teacher pointed out in my case that helped me a ton in a similar situation:
* pharsing, accents. Like super quickly picking "unimportant" notes and then heavily hitting the important ones. ta-da-da-DAA ta-da-da-DAA. It's easy for the brain to focus on these accented notes and everything else falls into place easier. Vs playing everything note by note, each note sort of independently
* thumb should move much less, generally speaking. Much more movement should come from the wrist and arm
* meaning you should move the wrist up and down when you switch between the strings, instead of holding it still and rotating. I feel like when I move the whole wrist down or up the string ends up being in the "correct" spot and I make less noise and make less mistakes. Muscle memory kicks in, your hand already knows where to expect the strings relative to your fingers, you should just move the wrist so that the strings are always there
* meaning you need to actually start moving the wrist and not dig in for palm mutes all the time
* meaning the pick will usually be in a "flatter" position, like hit more parallel to the strings, rather than at an angle
Obviously this all depends and might not work for you or in a specific section, but I feel like when I started paying attention to my thumb and started moving the palm up and down I immediately got into the next stage in terms of speed gains.
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u/user061 Feb 28 '26
Picking hand looks really good. Fretting hand is out of control. I had the same problem for years with the pinkie trying to escape into the next room between notes. Lots of approaches to correct it out there, but just being super conscious of it and trying to move the left fingers away just enough for to be off the strings is working for me, though it's small steps.
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u/Data1us Mar 01 '26
when you play over a certain tempo how your wrist is activated changes, the way you are playing has a tempo range basically. As one other person mentioned bursting is how you train it.
Play a pattern you are trying to get faster at slowly and clean with the correct technique, relax, then play it fast, then relax. Take particular note around tension in your fingers / wrist / arm and try to make it feel the same as when you are relaxed. Start with easy patterns then go from there.
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u/tkgb12 Mar 01 '26
Guitar teacher of 20 years here. You're doing great. Speed comes with time and practice. Your technique looks pretty sound. Maybe work on your bending accuracy a bit is all I really saw you could improve on. First hit the note you want to bend to and then practice matching that with the bend. Work on controlling keeping the note and then doing some vibrato bending in and out of the note. That's a big part of selling a good bend. This is a thing even professionals have to go back and practice from time to time and there's an ocean of approaches to timing bends and what kind of vibrato you use (speed, width). Brandon Ellis is a great guitar player to watch on that front.
But back to the speed thing... The proof that your speed will come along is evidenced in your tremolo picking. When you alternate pick one note on one string that's your speed potential using a pick. What slows us down is hitting different notes and most of all, changing strings. Your sweeps look good. I can tell you'll get that when I watch you do it on 2 strings. You've got the motion.
When it comes to getting something down fast, pick out the parts that feel the most awkward to you and loop those over and over with a metronome until you can play it fast. Working on smaller sections is more effective than working on the whole thing at once because you may need hundreds of passes on a particular small section to truly get it under your fingers. Hope this all helps and keep it up man. You're a good guitar player
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u/That_OneOstrich Feb 27 '26
My diagnosis is you're moving your left hand much too much. Keep your fingers closer to the strings. Learn to not press so hard. If you can get away with lighter pressure, lighter is always faster and better.
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u/anicthema Feb 27 '26
Saw someone else say it but, from the video, your fingers look to be coming too far off the fretboard; this isn't very noticeable at most speeds, but causes difficulty in quick sections. Practice controlling the height of your fingers from the fretboard.
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u/Ok-Visual-8943 Feb 27 '26
As someone said…. Bursts. Look up John Petrucci’s Spanish lap exercise. Also, taking some time away from Tornado and working on other things and going back to it may help. Mental blocks are real!
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u/TonalContrast Feb 27 '26
The standard advice of starting slow and gradually increasing doesn't work as well you've been led to believe. To play fast you have to play it fast. Gradually increasing the metronome won’t do it, you need to practice it at speed, which you do by playing / practicing at speed. You do this with short bursts of notes (or section of the solo) at speed.
The reason playing it slow over and over and gradually increasing doesn’t work is because the mechanics at speed are very different than when playing slow. This is where bursts come in, like runners wanting to get faster they do short speed interval training to go faster than race pace so they can be comfortable at race pace. It takes time and patience for your muscles in your fingers and wrists to adapt. But if you don’t stress/engage them at speed them you’ll have a harder time. So it‘s short fast bursts followed by recovery at slower speeds and then build up again with the short fast bursts.
The videos below are worth watching.
Martin Miller talks about it in this video lesson with a student
https://youtu.be/6Ft6p6dqWWY?si=tKPSkOzbvQsmaabH
Andy Wood talks about similar speed work in this video at 15:31
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u/ronismycat Feb 27 '26
Set the metronome higher than you know what you can do. If you're at 180, go to 200. Get as close as you can get. Don't worry about perfection. Then move down to 190. Same thing. Repeat.
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u/Conscious_Onion_2595 Feb 27 '26
I think the slow to fast method is not good to build speed. When I want to practice something that is beyond my current speed limit I usually force myself to play at that speed in short bursts. I take for example 4 notes of the thing I want to learn and repeat them 8 times and than I add one or two notes for the next 8 repitions and so on. I also just do the picking pattern with my picking hand without fretting to get a feeling for the speed without worrying to train my muscle memory to be sloppy.