How can I improve my fast playing?
Nancy from Kentucky: I am working on Little Liza Jane. When I get to 5:45 on the Full Play-Along Track it becomes too fast.
- First, work on your timing at a comfortable medium speed.
- If you can’t do this, then you won’t be able to play fast
- Use a metronome
- It might be hard at first, so start with very simple things, like going single notes and rhythms on open strings
- When you want to speed up a tune, speed up the most challenging parts
- These parts will set the tempo for the whole tune
- As you speed up the hardest parts, you’ll be able to speed up the whole tune
- The Jedi-knight method of playing fast: play things VERY SLOWLY with a metronome
- This is hard
- Don’t worry too much about playing fast
- If you focus on fundamentals, this will happen more easily down the line
- Will a metronome help my fiddling?
- Metronome tracks
Further learning
This micro-lesson is an excerpt from an office hours webinar I gave on July 15, 2020. View the entire live-stream with indexed questions here.
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I like both-learning is easier for me with the different tempos and then when I know the song sort of, I like the single tempo
Single tempo is best for learning. Or being able to loop on slower tempo.
True! Once you’ve learned something, playing it faster will help you remember it.