Want to play faster? You’re not alone — speed is one of the most common things guitarists ask about. In the video above, we’ll cover three practical things you can do right now to start building real picking speed. No gimmicks, just the stuff that actually works.

Fair warning though: speed takes time. Anyone can play fast — but playing fast, clean, and musical takes practice. The good news is that if you practice smart, progress comes quicker than you’d think.

1. Practice Clean, Without Distortion

This one surprises a lot of players. When you’re working on speed, practice with a clean tone — no distortion, no overdrive.

Distortion hides sloppy technique. It fills in the gaps and masks weak notes, which feels great in the moment but doesn’t help you improve. A clean tone is honest. Every muted string, every missed note shows up clearly. That feedback is exactly what you need to tighten things up.

Work on your scales clean until the notes ring out clearly and evenly. Then add the dirt back in.

2. Use a Metronome and Move Up One BPM at a Time

This is the method that actually builds speed — and it’s the one most players skip because it feels too slow.

Start at 60 BPM. Play your scale pattern up and down, nice and clean. When you can do that without any mistakes, bump it up to 61. Then 62. One BPM at a time.

Here’s a useful trick from the video: as you move up the neck fret by fret (say, moving your scale pattern from the 5th fret to the 6th), bump your metronome up by 1 BPM each time you move. It ties the tempo increase to your physical movement up the neck, which makes it feel natural and keeps you progressing steadily.

It’s slow going at first. But a week of this kind of practice does more for your speed than a month of just playing fast and sloppy.

3. Use Alternate Picking — Always

Alternate picking means you strictly alternate down strokes and up strokes: down, up, down, up — without breaking the pattern even when you change strings.

I’ll be honest: I had to unlearn bad habits here myself. It’s easy to default to all-downstrokes when you’re starting out because it feels more natural. But all-downstrokes hit a hard ceiling for speed. Alternate picking is what lets you break through.

The tricky part is keeping the pattern consistent when you cross from one string to the next. That’s where most players slip up. So practice string changes slowly and make sure your picking hand stays in rhythm.

Once alternate picking becomes automatic, you’ll notice your speed increasing even without trying — because you’re no longer fighting your own technique.

Putting It Together

Start every practice session with a short warm-up at slow tempo. Then pick one of these three things to focus on that day. Don’t try to fix everything at once.

If you want to put these exercises to work on actual scale patterns, check out the pentatonic scale lesson — that’s the best pattern to build speed on when you’re starting out. And once you’re comfortable in one position, connecting guitar scale patterns across the neck is a great next challenge.

For a broader look at what scales to work on, the guitar scales hub is the best place to start.