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I've gathered up 51 of my very best fretting hand speed hacks that thousands of my students have used to see nearly instant boosts in their accuracy and ease of playing, and I put them all in this massive video so you can do the same.
Discover 51 expert hacks to boost your fretting hand speed, accuracy, and ease for guitar playing with practical tips and detailed techniques.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Proper fretting pressure is essential for speed and clarity.
- Thumb and wrist positioning significantly impact finger stretch and injury prevention.
- Relaxation and finger independence form the foundation for fast playing.
- Finger rolling requires a slight diagonal motion for consistency.
- Consistent fingering and hand positioning improve muscle memory and performance.
What the video covers
- Learn the ideal pressure to apply with your fretting hand for fast, clear notes.
- Understand the correct thumb and wrist positioning to improve finger stretches and avoid injury.
- Discover how to mute strings effectively using the index finger in a bar chord shape.
- Master finger independence by focusing on relaxation and proper thumb placement.
- Improve finger rolling techniques for cleaner arpeggios by angling the finger diagonally.
- Adjust hand angle to maintain thumb support when playing scales ascending strings.
- Use fewer fingers on high frets to accommodate closer fret spacing and thicker fingers.
- Practice slow, relaxed finger movements to build stamina and control before increasing speed.
- Adopt proper guitar positioning to reduce arm stretch and enhance playing comfort.
- Focus on body relaxation and tension release to maximize speed and endurance.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Overview of 51 Speed Hacks
- 02:03Wrist and Thumb Positioning for Finger Stretching
- 03:51Proper Thumb Placement and Finger Independence
- 05:48Finger Rolling Techniques for Arpeggios
- 07:43Hand Angle Adjustments for Scale Playing
- 10:43Relaxation and Tension Management in Playing
- 12:03Building Stamina and Endurance with Control
- 14:29Guitar Positioning and Body Mechanics
- 15:30Final Tips on Focus and Position Shifting
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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Enjoy. You may have heard that you're not supposed to squeeze the strings too hard to play fast, but nobody defines exactly what that means or how to actually find that ideal amount of pressure. Well, here's how you do it. Start by pushing
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down the eighth fret on the G string with just your normal amount of pressure in the fretting hand, and then with your picking hand do tremolo picking at just moderate speed like this. And as you're doing it, gradually release
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the amount of pressure in your fretting hand until you stop hearing a clear note like this. When you stop hearing a clear note, now obviously you're not using enough pressure in the fretting hand, so the next step is to simply add a little bit of
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pressure back in with the fretting hand so that you start hearing a clear note and then stop like this. When you get a clear note back, that is exactly the amount of pressure you need in the fretting hand to produce a clear
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sound. So now you need to remember what that feels like and practice doing it with different fingers. And once you remember that feeling, apply it to all your scale sequences and other licks. That's exactly how much pressure
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you need to play fast. You may have heard that when you play scales and scale sequences, you're supposed to fret notes on the fingertips, but that's not entirely true, especially in the case of the index finger. The reason for that is
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it has another role to play. It needs to mute all of these higher strings from making noise, and in order to do that, it cannot be bent like this. It has to be almost in a bar chord shape, except it's
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not fretting these higher notes, so just slightly touching them. But to do that, it needs to fret the note somewhere on the side. As you can see, probably right here. This is where the string marking is right here. If you're having a hard time
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stretching your fingers or playing stretchy guitar licks, check your thumb position and your wrist position, because if your thumb is wrapped around the neck like mine right now, it's going to be impossible to spread the fingers very
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far. And if your wrist is bent backwards like mine right now, well, not only can it lead to injury because it's very dangerous to have your wrist bent backwards like this for an extended period of time, but it also makes it even
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harder to spread the fingers. Instead of this position, simply move the thumb back and bend the wrist forward, and all of a sudden your hand's going to open up and even difficult stretches are going to become much, much easier. For some licks
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like these diminished seventh arpeggios, don't underestimate just how low the thumb needs to be. For example, if I turn around, you can see my thumb was very near the high E string. There's no way for me to make the stretch if my
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thumb was here, here, here, or here. When you're applying on the very high frets of the guitar, it's very useful to just omit the fourth finger and just use fingers one, two, and three. That's because the frets are so
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much closer together. There's simply not enough room to cram four fingers where you can just cram three fingers and get the same result. The thicker your fingers are, the more useful this trick becomes. You just have to remember to be
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consistent with the fingering you're using and don't switch back and forth between this and this because then your brain won't know which fingering to use when the time comes. When you're playing three notes per string scales and you've
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got three notes separated by a whole step, like say frets 5, 7, and 9, do not use fingers 1, 3, and 4. Use fingers 1, 2, and 4. It is much, much harder to separate fingers 3 and 4 than fingers
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2 and 4 or 1 and 2. So how do you make your fretting hand fingers more independent? Well, let's keep things really simple. Let's just play one note. I'm just going to fret the fifth fret on the third string. Try to follow along. Can
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you get your hand in this position and be relaxed? Can you take the other fingers and just wiggle them like this and confirm that they're relaxed? Can you check and make sure your shoulders, your left shoulder and your right shoulder
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are both relaxed? Can you check to make sure your jaw is relaxed, that you're breathing normally, you're not tensing your stomach, that your feet are relaxed, the whole thing? Can you do that while just fretting one note? Now what about
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your thumb position? Is your thumb like this? That's wrong. Is your thumb like this? That's also wrong. If your thumb is like this, then you're doing it right. So before you move on and play any scale sequences, licks, patterns, or look for any
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finger independence drills, make sure you can play one note and just get all these details to be correct. And after you're confident you can fret one note, then practice playing a scale like say a minor pentatonic scale. Just focus on
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fretting this note here while these guys are relaxed. Fret the second note, make sure these guys are relaxed. Then fret the note on the fifth string, wiggle these fingers, make sure they're relaxed, then this note, this note. Just go note by
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note while watching your fretting hand in a mirror or into a webcam. As you're watching my hand right now, make sure that everything stays relaxed and that your thumb position is still like this and not like this and not wrapped around
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the neck. Those are the details that are going to set the foundation for proper finger independence. Many people struggle to play arpeggios that have finger rolling motions in them. You know, we have to fret several notes across different
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strings on the same fret with the same finger. If you do it wrong, it sounds like this. Absolutely horrible. But even if you understand that this is not a bar, that you're not supposed to just fret all three notes with one finger like this
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and then just hit them like a chord, you're supposed to play one note at a time. It can still feel a little bit inconsistent and there can still be a little bit of sloppiness in there. Here's the hack for
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fixing this. Instead of having the finger parallel with the fret like common sense would tell you, when you're doing the finger roll, you want to angle it sideways a little bit like this. So if you're doing a three-string roll on the
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seventh fret, you're going to start right next to the seventh fret on the third string, but then when you're done, the finger is going to be basically touching the high E string near the sixth fret. It seems weird, but this is the key to
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getting your rolling to be a lot more consistent and a lot cleaner. Watch, try it out. It works. And of course, it does not matter if you do rolling in the beginning, middle, or end of the arpeggio or which finger you end up
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doing the roll with. It still takes this slight diagonal path with the finger across the frets to do the rolling consistently and cleanly. Watch, practice it this way. It'll help you a lot. Many people run into this weird
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problem with their thumb as they learn to play scales with the thumb behind the neck of the guitar, like I talked about in my "Blame Your Thumb" video tutorial. As they ascend the scale, they go from the sixth string to the fifth string to the
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fourth to the third to the second and first. If the thumb follows along with the other fingers, by the time you are on the second string or the first string, the thumb feels like it's going to be slipping off the fretboard any second,
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and you feel like you have no support at all. Here's a simple way to fix this. All you do is you slightly angle your hand into the non-perpendicular fretting position that I talk about in my other videos when you get to the second string
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and the first string. So when you start out in this position with this knuckle and this knuckle basically perpendicular to the frets, you stay in this position and you keep the thumb in the center of the fretboard basically as you are
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ascending the first four strings, but then as you...
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center of the fretboard and have your hand in a nice balanced position here's what it looks like from the back Sam I'm going to play an A major scale and I'm going to have the thumb in the center of
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the fretboard where it should be I'm going to start ascending to the sixth string fifth fourth third string the thumb didn't move at all now I need to shift by one fret as I go to the second string because I'm playing a three not
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per string major scale and instead of sliding the thumb down like this I'm just going to keep it exactly where it is but I'm going to turn the hand to get this non-perpendicular hand position and that allows me to keep the thumb planted
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in basically the same spot I want you to watch Paul play a couple of fast runs and I want you to notice his Fring hand and what happens to it when he stops playing and you can see that not only is
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his hand immediately relaxed but that it was already incredibly relaxed while he was [Music] playing so right there you can see when Paul finished playing his hand was so relaxed that he didn't have to release all that much much tension when he
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finished playing this is a very important detail and it's is a great test for you to know if you are playing with extra tension if when you finish playing you feel like you have to relax a lot sort of like you
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finish playing and then I'm done playing if you feel even a little bit like that you're doing it wrong you're using way too much tension be more like Paul Gilbert good play now the next clip is from Paul Gilbert's instructional video
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and you can see Paul playing his famous four node picking and he is sometimes picking the strings very lightly with a lot of pal muting and sometimes very open very aggressively with a lot of pick attack but what I want you to notice is how the
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level of tension in his Fring hand while he's doing it does not change start hitting harder now check this out you can see Paul wiggle his left elbow from side to side while while he's playing and this is a great barometer for how well you're
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controlling excessive tension in your playing because if you can play and wiggle your elbow from side to side like this it's a great sign that you're probably quite relaxed and back when I was still trying to figure out what the
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heck it even means to play guitar and be relaxed I was watching these potato cam clips of great players and I was looking for any kind of visual clue that would help me understand how their body is feeling while they were playing and this
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is one of the biggest clues that I found when I thanked Paul Gilbert for that now obviously he doesn't do this all the time or in every lick and you shouldn't do that all the time either it's just a
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little way to test when you are being too tense so you can back off and relax and then once you learn to play without extra tension you can move your hand or your elbow any way you want the next
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thing that blew my mind was Paul's Legato articulation or specifically is pull-offs when I'm playing LS like [Music] this what's happening was this p PS were so loud and so articulate they were almost on par with his picking hand
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meanwhile we know that if you want to play Legato fast you can't use too much tension because that's going to slow you down so what was going on here what was happening was to do the pull off Paul
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wouldn't just put the finger on the string as if threading a regular note with the fingertip he actually put the finger slightly above the string so the tip ended up actually on the wood between the D string and the a string in
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this case and when doing the pull off he get more leverage on the string this way because he would grab the string essentially with the print with the pad of the finger and that allowed him to get a much louder note with a lot less
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[Music] [Applause] effort threading hand endurance and stamina and you can see when John is demonstrating the Legato exercises from the tape he tells you to practice them one minute each the idea is to not stop do one exercise into the next a minute
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each and that's a good piece of advice in general if and that's a big if you have two big fundamentals in place and those two things are his Fring hand positioning and tension control if you watch Jon's Fring hand carefully you can
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see that his technique is absolutely textbook perfect his thumb is behind the neck of the guitar as it should be and more importantly when he shifts positions his thumb stays behind the middle finger or roughly between the middle finger or the ring finger of the
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Fring hand it does not begin to point sideways towards the tuning [Music] pegs and you can tell this because his hand doesn't begin to angle like this when he changes positions and these things combined with General control over excessive muscle tension in the
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rest of his body enable Jon and other guitar players like him who have this down to play Legato with Incredible endurance and incredible stamina and one way you can tell that Jon is being very relaxed when he plays is just observe
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the rest of his body for example pay attention to his picking hand as he's playing those Legato fragments and shifting up and down through different positions anytime you're making position shifts with the Fring hand it takes a great deal of control to stay relaxed
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because the motion of moving towards the body or especially away from your body can very easily trigger tension in your picking hand in your feet it can cause you to hold your breath to tense your jaw or to tense your stomach and those
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things are no go when it comes to shredding any Fring hand stamina or endurance building drills only work after after you've built this Foundation of threading hand control first notice also Jon's threading hand wrist angle it's always bent forward like this
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instead of bent backwards or instead of being flat like this this allows his knuckles his middle Knuckles of the fingers right here these Knuckles to be more open instead of being curled in like this when your knuckles are curled
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like this it takes a lot more Force to do pull-offs with any kind of power or any kind of volume but when you open them up like this all of a sudden you get a lot more of the finger power and
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the wrist power behind any of the pull-offs that you do so you get more volume from each note with less effort and JN has really has this down and that allows him to do Legato cleanly and fast for long periods of time without getting
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tired understand both motions of a pulloff let's say I'm going to do a pulloff from the ring finger down to the index finger if I were to simply pull down with the ring finger towards the floor like this what do you see
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happening you see that the string is obviously bending and if I did that with distortion on you would hear that it sounds really horribly Out Of Tune [Music] that's obviously not the sound you want so that brings me to the second element
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of Clean and Clear pull-ups to avoid the node going out of tune what I need to do in this case with the index finger is I need to push the index finger up towards the ceiling a little bit just enough to
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counterbalance the pulling force that the ring finger is doing like this turn the volume off on your guitar and you practice completely unplugged what you're going to do is exaggerate the pulling motion with the finger doing the pull off and the pushing motion with
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the finger that's going to catch the string right after the pulloff so when you're playing slowly your fingers are going to be working over time to get the notes to come [Music] out but after a bit of this kind of
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practice you will build the right level of strength in your fretting hand so when you turn Distortion back on you're playing you're just going to feel like hot knife through butter be quick to relax between notes what you do when you
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practice slowly you do a pulloff and while the pulloff is sustaining here what you want to do is check the rest of your body for tension and relax everything that's not involved in doing the pulloff even the finger
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that just did the pull off itself should be relaxed at this point then you do the next note and repeat the process relax everything and as you practice slowly one note at a time you check your body for tension and relax it's easier to do
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pull-offs much easier to do pull offs with the higher strings when the hand is in this non-perpendicular position when your fingers are like this not only does your thumb have to come way down here like this which makes pull-offs harder
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to do to begin with but also it's a lot harder to do pull-offs by just pulling with the finger if you angle the hand a little bit like this the thumb is going to come up on the strings like so a little bit it's not
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hanging over the edge of the fretboard it is still behind it but it is higher to give your finger more leverage and now the wrist and the forearm can be involved as well this is a much more ergonomic position for the Fring hand to
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do Legato on the higher strings another big advantage of the non-perpendicular hand position especially when you get to playing string three and below is it allows you to use the underside of your index finger to mute the higher in Pitch
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strings so strings B and high e and not let them ring out you see when you force the perpendicular hand position too strictly what happens is now the higher strings are not covered or not muted at all so if I do
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this you can hear them ring out clearly but if I go from the totally forced perpendicular hand position to the non-perpendicular hand position and turn to the side now the index finger is touching the B and the high E string and
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if I try to hit them you can hear they're muted which is exactly what I want so not only are the pull-offs easier to do fast and are more articulate but the playing overall is more clean and from watching a lot of
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highlevel players play really fast Legato runs I can see that they're using the non-perpendicular hand position to do really fast pull-offs even when they're playing really low on the [Music] [Music] [Music] neck [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] build more calluses in your Fring hand
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fingers because the thicker your calluses are the less power and the less strength you need to push the notes down to begin with just for Fring regular notes and the easier it becomes to do hammer on pull-offs and slides and the
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single best way I know to build a lot of calluses really quickly is to actually not practice Legato at all and instead practice the crap out of your vibr and string bents sit there for 5 minutes and practice vibr with every
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finger and not only will your vibr get better and your phrasing will improve but you'll build calluses all over with the fingertips really quickly and that will make your Legato feel like butter as well now let's talk about muting the
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higher in Pitch strings the main way I do it is by using the index finger of my threading hand what it does is it rests on the strings that are higher in Pitch than the one I want to play and it keeps
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them covered so as you can see I'm threading the C note on the sixth string of the guitar about to play the c major scale and the index finger is covering in a little Arc strings a to the high e
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so earlier when I showed you that if I turn the volume on on my guitar you your noise that's because nothing is muting the strings in this moment but when I get into this index finger muting position and I turn the volume on you're
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not going to hear really anything except for maybe slight undertones of the C note that I'm Fring and that I want you to hear you just hear this you don't really hear the other strings unless I hit them hard with the
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[Music] pi because they're muted by the index finger and that's why when I'm playing a scale up and down my playing is consistently clean in both [Applause] [Music] directions and that's why when I finished playing the scale I could
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remove my picking hand from the strings because one there are no more strings that are lower in Pitch than the one I finished playing and second my index finger is covering all the strings except for the one that I'm actually
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sustaining right now so if you're playing a scale and the notes are bleeding together like this the first thing you want to do is slow down enough until you're confident that there's no bleeding happening anymore you want to give yourself that
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confidence that hey at least if I go slowly enough the bleeding issue disappears and then you want to speed the tempo up again and find the exact threshold where if you go any faster the bleeding issue comes back and becomes
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uncontrollable if you go any slower it disappears that is the magic Tempo that is the threshold where you need to practice and train yourself to make your playing bleed free if you find yourself squeezing the crap out of the guitar
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neck when you play chors and when you strum hard you're doing it wrong what you want to do is you want to relax the shoulder relax the bicep of your Fring hand and that's going to relax your whole arm and it's going to allow the
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weight of your arm to do much of the work to get the strings to the Frets not finger pressure and certainly not thumb pressure when you get it right it feels like the arm weighs almost nothing and it's doing all the work of Fring the bar
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chords for you some guitar players like inve or Paul Gilbert as two examples that come to mind immediately often play scales and scale sequences or arpeggios with their thumb over the neck of the guitar even when they're playing on the
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lower Frets what's the deal with that it's actually all really simple if you think back to what I said earlier about playing up high on the fretboard I said that for most people it gets really uncomfortable to squeeze the fingers in
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these tight spaces between the higher Frets and keep the thumb behind the middle finger at the same time well for somebody with larger hands like Paul Gilbert or inve they experience that discomfort way sooner than the rest of
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us meaning they experience that discomfort even on threats below 12 for example so to to compensate for that their thumb comes over the neck of the guitar and that feels normal and that feels natural and effortless for them
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but this is where many people get it wrong they look at somebody like ingber or Paul Gilbert and think oh they're playing on the seventh fret and their thumb is wrapped around the neck of the guitar and they're playing just fine I
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guess that's how I should have my hand too but if your hand is just average or below average in size it's not going to work for you that's where you develop all kinds of bad habits where you struggle with stretches or any of the
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other things that I mentioned earlier in this video if you sit with the guitar on your right leg here's what happens notice that the headstock of the guitar and the guitar neck is automatically a little bit further away from your body
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compared to if you sit with the guitar as you saw me sit a moment ago on your left leg and if you're trying to get into let's say this position to play an F major scale or trying to play an F
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major at nine cord down here well good luck with getting your hand to stretch that far even if you're doing everything else right as far as your Fring hand goes if you sit with the guitar on your left leg though there's way less torque
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on your forearm even when you're playing by the first fret simply because you don't have to reach as far to play the cord licks and solos you're trying to play If you're trying to play stretchy licks and your thumb is wrapped around
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the neck of the guitar like this or if it's pointing towards the tuning pegs like this or if it stays behind does the finger shift and it turns this way towards the tuning pegs when you shift positions you've pretty much shot
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yourself in the foot let's say your goal is to play this a major at nine chord right here but right now it's too difficult to spread your fingers like this on the fifth fret and stay relaxed what can you do you want to find how
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close can you get to the fifth fret and be relaxed let's say for you the threshold of control is going to be on Fret eight so what you want to do is get into the score position and just sit
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here and hold the score down and relax your entire body focus on your jaw focus on your breathing relax everything make sure your shoulders are relaxed make sure your legs are relaxed for about 20 seconds or 30 seconds shake your hand
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out relax everything make sure there's no pain and then do it again and if you do several intervals like this is going to loosen everything up right here and it's going to help you move your threshold down lower from the eighth
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fret to fret 7even fret six and eventually fret 5 the next thing you can do is to Simply cheat elevate your guitar neck so it's almost vertical and it's going to suddenly feel a lot easier to get in this position on the fifth
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fret that's because now your guitar is way closer to your body your arm doesn't have to stretch as far this is why by the way some top level shredders like Paul Gilbert for example get their guitar in nearly vertical position to
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play certain licks and certain solos and if someone like Paul Gilbert does it the guy with extra long fingers that should tell you something you can exaggerate the difficulty what you can do is go down to fret three and it's going to be
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impossible it's going to feel way harder you're not even going to be able to reach with your pinky finger to the right fret that's okay the goal here is to simply try and do your best to be relaxed in this harder than normal
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position to make the original feel much easier in comparison whenever you learn tab of any guitar solo from any online website treat it like a politician promis to treat the economy it's probably both and whenever you're are learning a lick that feels abnormally
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difficult to play even at a slow tempo ask yourself questions like am I even using the best possible fingering here why am I starting this in a downstroke maybe an upstroke is better maybe as should start this slick with the middle
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finger instead of the index finger explore these little things you normally take for granted and you often will find clues or ways to approach a problem you never thought about before that make your playing feel easier now the next
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beginner mistake to avoid is about bending strings without wrapping the thumb around the neck of the guitar I see many people try to bend strings by just extending their fingers like this meanwhile their thumb is behind the neck
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pointing up at the ceiling that's not what you want to do there's two problems with this one it's very hard to bend the strings consistently in tune but possibly even more importantly you tend to get a lot of string noise when you
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bend strings like this watch see this noise it happens because the lower in Pitch strings now got caught under the fingertip of the finger doing the bending that's not what you want so the solution solution is to wrap
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the thumb around the neck of the guitar and have the hand slanted slightly so that the rotation comes from the forearm from the entire arm and not from extending the fingers so notice how this part of the hand where the index finger
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connects to the Palm is the pivot point this is where the hand rotates the fingers do not extend the whole hand [Music] rotates notice how this part is pressing against the bottom of the neck that is the pivot point that I was talking about
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so practice this bending rotational motion in front of a mirror so you can observe the motion make sure you're doing it the right way it won't take you too long to get this down and you'll sound a whole lot more Pro when you do
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now normally when you play guitar and you fret notes your finger comes down straight and comes head on with with the fingertip on the string and that's fine but when you're doing vibr and let's say on the G string I'm going to do vibr by
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moving the string down towards the floor what you want to do is have the fingertip come up over the string and actually hook the finger on the string instead of push the note down with the fingertip and then you can get way
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better leverage to get nice control vibr by getting the finger actually in between the G string and the D string in this case that's when you're get going to get the best hand position for [Music] vibr now if you're doing vibr let's say
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on the B string and you're going to be pushing the string up what you want to do is get the finger underneath the B string so between the B string and and the high E string so you're literally
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pushing up on the string as if you're doing a military press if you want to use the weightlifting analogy get the finger underneath the B string and push it up versus threading the note as you normally would with the fingertip and
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then it sounds and looks like [Music] this and just making a tiny adjustment by getting under the string or starting over the string above the string is going to make a huge difference in how easy vibr feels avoid doing vibr with
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the index finger and avoid doing B note vibr with the index finger as well for a couple of reasons one your index finger even though it's the strongest finger it's only one finger and it's very hard to get a wide controlled vibr with one
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finger than it is with two fingers or with three fingers so I almost never in fact scratch that I never do vibr with just the index finger I always find a way to change the fingering of what I'm
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practicing so I do vibr with the middle finger or the ring finger and notice that these other fingers are riding along the finger doing the vibr and my index finger usually what it does is it rests on the lower in Pitch string to
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make sure it is clean so even when I'm doing wide and fast vibr or bent note vibr I have basically no problems with string noise because I'm pulling the lower string out of the way with the pick and I'm using more than one finger
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to do vibr and using the index finger to touch the lower string to control noise even though it's theoretically possible to do vibr and even string bends with the thumb behind the neck of the guitar if you want to combine both it's going
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to feel very awkward and you're not going to have any real control this way but the moment you wrap your thumb over the neck of the guitar and notice how my elbow comes up and away from my body as well all of a sudden I have a
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lot more leverage to do it right and on some legs you need to combine bent notes on mybr with some scales and scale sequences so part of what you need to practice is changing the thumb position from behind the neck
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to over the neck to back behind the neck because that's what you need to maintain full control over the licks like this for [Music] example notice how I changed my thumb position back and forth several times and that's part of what you need to pay
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attention to when you practice licks like this when many people do vibr they add vibr instantly the moment they play the note they want to hear vibr on like this a more dramatic way to do vibr which I learned from my good friend Tom
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hes is to play the note and wait for about half a second before you add vibr delaying it like this this sounds way more dramatic and you sound more like a singer would sound when you play notes and it sounds even
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better on bent notes like this now it takes a little bit of control to do it this way because you have to be careful to mute string noise around the bent node as you're waiting for vibr but when you get it right man it sounds
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awesome when you're playing the notes slowly pay attention to keeping your shoulder your bicep and the fingers that are not threading notes relaxed so when you're Fring a note make sure that these guys don't fly away from the strings
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like this they don't curl up like this keep everything nice and relaxed and I'm going to play the lick slowly or the first part of it slow for you right now what I want you to notice is how relaxed
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my hand looks as I do it [Music] observe that's what you want to focus on look at your hand in the mirror and make sure it is just as relaxed now the fourth mistake that's Skilling your gains is only watching your hands from
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one angle so take a look here this is how most guitar players watch their hands I call this the top down view of your picking hand and your Fring hand now this is certainly much better than not watching your hands at all but
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you're also going to see some inefficiencies that you think are way worse than they really are I often have guitar players come to me and say hey Mike I've got a severe issue with finger independence and my pinkies flying when
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I play but then I watch them play and I don't notice the problem and the reason for the discrepancy is because they're watching their feding hand from the top down and I'm watching it head on when you watch your favorite guitar players
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you're also only watching them from the front most most of the time but if you came behind them and you looked over their shoulder I would bet you will see their finking finger flying a lot more than you ever realized that's because
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looking down at your feding hand gives you the least flattering view of what is happening in your fingers just because the finger is flying away from the strings isn't necessarily bad as long as the finger is relaxed and as long as
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that's happening and you see the pinky finger flying up a little bit that's not the end of the world and for most people it's not even worth the time worrying about if you're playing Guitar let's say with the middle thing and you fret a
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note the other fingers fly up like this or you fret a notee with the ring finger the pinky finger goes under the fretboard looks like a coat hanger it all comes back to tension what you got to do is practice Fring notes and as one
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finger let's say the middle finger is pressing down a note you got to pay attention to what the other fingers are doing and go slowly enough until you can get the motion under control and then you do this enough times to make the
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Habit stick to Simply focus on where your eyes are looking let's say I'm playing playing this arpeggio sequence that goes like [Music] this and my goal is to nail the position shifting from the eighth fret to the 12th fret to the 17th fret to the 20th
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fret and to the 24th fret and the way I'm going to do that is by looking ahead to the 12 threet while my hand is still playing this shape over here from threets 5 to 8 that's because when my
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hand is in this position I no longer have to look at what each finger is doing because I and you should have this shape already memorized and while my hand is doing its job over here if I'm looking ahead to the 12 fret it's way
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more likely that I'm going to nail this slide this position shift with accuracy when I was playing that scale sequence for you earlier I'm starting to look to the Fret where my hand is going to jump before my
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hand starts to move there this is key the second tip I have for you and this one is particularly helpful for syncing up your hands right after the position shift is to isolate the notes right around the position shift
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[Laughter] like that isolate just the Fring hand and make the position jumps only looking at the threading hand without worrying about what the picking hand is doing this will help you learn the Motions of the threading hand a lot faster compared
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to having to focus on two things at the same time this hand and this hand and by isolating the Motions of one hand once you get the Fring hand positions in your muscle memory then you can bring the
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picking hand back in and and put it all together your thumb position has a lot to do with you either doing position shifts cleanly and accurately or totally messing them up take for example this two string pattern on strings B and high
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e six node groupings sound like [Music] this most people screw this up with their thumb because it begins to point sideways as they shift positions from the lower position to the higher position and that's when their fingers get out of position and their hands get
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out of sink and the play falls apart here's what it should look like when done [Music] correctly as you can see my thumb stayed behind the middle finger basically the whole time and no matter if I was down
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here or up here it was pointing up towards the ceiling if you have a hard time doing that if your thumb tends to turn sideways like it has a mind of its own all you want to do to control it is
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is separate your Fring hand from the picking hand and just do the Motions of the position shift very slowly while watching your thumb and making sure it stays exactly where it needs to be and as you do enough repetitions your thumb
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will learn that that's where it's supposed to stay the whole time and your position shifting will become a lot easier and more consistent and if you want some more help from me with getting faster in Guitar check out the link in
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the description of this video go to the page on the screen right now I'm going to show you a free 1hour Master Class called guitar speed formula what it is is a special way to practice I've developed where you don't have to do any
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slow practice whatsoever in fact you only have to practice maybe 20 or 30 minutes per day and if you do what I tell you in this master class you can very often see some pretty impressive speed gains in as little as one day if
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you like the sound of that check out the link and through email address I'll send you the video for free
Topics:guitar speed hacksfretting hand techniquefinger independenceguitar thumb positionwrist posture guitararpeggio finger rollguitar scale practicefast guitar playingguitar finger stretchingguitar practice tips
