3 Ways to Use Speed in Your Playing

Check out this awesome guest post by Rob of ChainsawGuitarTuition.com on 3 Ways to Use Speed in Your Playing!

One of the topics of hot debate among guitarists- and musicians alike- is that of speed. Shredding your face off can be impressive, but there are definitely some people who take things too far.

Now, I’m not going to tell you exactly where the line is- use your own judgement. However, we should all be able to agree that speed isn’t- and never will be- an end in itself.

The music should always come first.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use a bit of speed in your playing, just that you need to be careful. I mean, does that faster section really fit the song? If not, you might be better off leaving it out.

Speed is OK, when you use it properly, but can be very dangerous when you’re careless with it! A constant stream of thousands of notes a second does not always a good solo make!

So, in the interests of ‘shred safety’, here are some of the few reasons it might be OK to break the speed limits.

TOP 3 PLACES TO SAFELY USE SPEED

Now, there may be more reasons to push the boundaries of speed in your solos, but these are some of the most common.

1 – THE SCALE RUN

The scale run usually makes an appearance in a solo as a linking device. When going from a slower section of a solo to a faster one (as in ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ by Guns and Roses), or linking your solo to it’s epic, high-pitched string-bend ending, scale runs are what you’ll need.

In practice, all they are is when you play up a scale. This is a great thing to do when you want to build tension, or get from one end of the neck to the other very quickly. It’s that simple…in theory.

Of course, putting that into practice may not be so straight foward. You don’t want it to sound like you’re just playing an exercise!

So, there are a few things you’ll need to get started with this technique:

• The correct scale
• The right timing
• A sequence
• Enough speed

I’m going to leave the first two things down to you. You should know what scale you’re using, and the timing depends on what you want to sound like.

The last one- enough speed- is also something I’m going to assume you don’t need help with. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this…

So, that leaves the third point: a sequence. This is what will turn your ‘scale exercise’ into a musical ‘scale run’.

This ‘secret sauce’ is literally just to break the scale up into smaller patterns. Then, it’ll not only stop you from sounding like you’re playing an exercise, it’ll make you seem faster, too!

The notes themselves are going by at the same rate…but you’re doing more with them. That’s how you will sound faster and more impressive.

Here are some examples. First, here is the A minor pentatonic scale:

Now, let’s try a ‘sequence of four’. This is where you go up four notes from each note. So, instead of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc… you get something more like: 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc…

Here’s the tab to show you what I mean:

You can also try the same thing with groups of three:

Here’s an example of using this kind of idea along one string:

Of course, these runs don’t have to follow these sequences exactly! They don’t even always have to be going up in pitch! Here is another example where sequences of three are mixed with stringbends and a descending scale:

 

2 – FOLLOWING FAST CHORDS

If the music that you’re playing along to is fairly fast, then it would make sense that you’re allowed to use a bit more speed.

In fact, this is sometimes the only way you can follow the chords of a song! In these kinds of situations, it’s often more effective to pick out a few chord tones from each chord as it passes.

Here is some examples where arpeggios are used in just this way. Arpeggios are just the notes from each chord played up and/or down in order. You can play them with standard picking, sweep picking, or with two handed tapping- the point is that it’s just notes from each chord.

With picking:

Sweep picking:

…and two handed tapping:

When I say: fast chords, I’m not only talking about quickly changing chords as in the above examples. This kind of thing works equally well rhythmically.

For example, if you’re playing to a heavy, thrash track, you have more licence to use your shred skillage. Even if that’s just to keep pace with the song!

Here’s an example of a lick that uses faster, arpeggio sequences over chords changing more slowly. The chords are changing more slowly, but the rhythm is still fast. These types of patterns can also be used over repeating riffs:

3 – WHEN YOU’RE USING PHRASING

Although the above reasons are important when considering when you should use more speed in a solo, this one trumps them all.

You see, unless you’re phrasing properly, you’ll never get away with using more speed in a solo! The good news is that if you’re phrasing properly, you’ll be able to shred almost wherever you want!

So, what is phrasing?

Phrasing is where you break up the notes, and organize your playing into smaller chunks. This prevents the monotony of a constant stream of notes, and is also the basis for how melodies are created.

For example, here are a set of notes, with no phrasing:

Now, the same thing, with a bit more phrasing:

See how the second example sounds much more musical? That’s just because we’ve broken the notes up into ‘phrases’. Essentially this mean that small bursts of speed can be far more effective than continuous shred!

Remember: art is about contrast. If you have no shading, you can have no light. Exactly the same thing applies to music- unless you have slower sections, nobody will notice the fast bits!

So, these aren’t all of the places you can use your speed, but they are certainly some of my favourite!