I’ve noodled around on guitars for close to thirty years, but only ever for my own pleasure. About five years ago I started practicing more deliberately, almost every day for 30-60 minutes, and even took lessons for a while. I've also tried some online courses.
For the last 14 months I’ve been going through Paul Gilbert’s Rock Guitar ArtistWorks course, working through his fundamentals. These are great and I’ve improved a lot, but the thing I’m struggling with there is the same that I’ve always struggled with: playing at the required/intended speed.
As a concrete example, I’ve spent months increasing my speed on the opening riff to AC/DC’s Thunderstruck from 80 bpm to about 100 bpm (maybe up to 110 on a good day, but only for a few bars). The original recording is 134 bpm—laughably out of reach for me. Or so I thought!
Then this weekend I came across Troy Grady's Help, I Can’t Play Fast video on YouTube and it was so on the nose I'm developing two black eyes. Everything he's talking about applies to me. (Except maybe the "experienced player" part!) "Start slow and increase the speed" is the advice I have always followed—but it’s just not working for me. And after watching this video, I finally understand why.
I signed up for Troy's Cracking The Code programme, and started going through his Pickslanting Primer. In it he demonstrates four different tests to determine your potential picking speed, and when I discovered I could pick at more than 200 bpm on three of them I nearly wept.
Troy explains in the course that when practicing slowly, any technique goes. Thus it's easy to end up with an inefficient technique which is impossible to make fast. This appears to be exactly what I've done. The fix is to instead start fast—and sloppy!—and then clean it up. Going fast forces you to use a more efficient technique.
Two weeks week later I can comfortably pick 16th notes on a single string at 134 bpm for minutes at a time. An amazing feeling! While I have not managed to get my left/right hand coordination under control yet, I have renewed hope of being able to play Thunderstruck at full speed—and I'm super excited about it!