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Observe Yourself
Consider recording yourself, listen carefully to what you’re playing. Is your tone good throughout? Where are the awkward points which we can isolate and smooth out. Is there a more efficient way to finger this passage? Is there a better position to play it in? Are you utilizing good posture? Is there too much tension in your hands? In your jaw? In your shoulders? Any such tension detracts from your performance by wasting energy and restricting free movement.
Try closing your eyes, or looking up while playing. You may need to slow down the metronome a bit to allow for this, but you’ll find it very liberating not to be forcing yourself to look at your hands while you're playing.
Isolation – Make Bite Sized Chunks
If you’re having difficulty with a phrase, look for and identify the trouble spots. If they’re not obvious, just break the phrase in half and see which half is harder to play than the other. Now break the fragment up into smaller fragments and see which of these is more difficult. Practice each part individually. Once you’ve mastered each fragment of the phrase, the next step is to master the approach and exit from the fragment. Put a couple of the fragments together, and practice them as a whole, smoothing out the transition between them. Practice the new, larger fragment for a while before adding more fragments. You may have to slow down the metronome in order to incorporate the new part. Continue this process until you’ve mastered the entire reassembled phrase.
Another method of improvement comes from separate practicing of the left/right hand. One form of picking known as "sweep picking" in the right hand (the pick hand), in both ascending and descending patterns. In a very short time, all guitarists become quite used to "alternating picking". Alternate picking is where one note is made by a down-stroke of the pick and the next is made by an up-stroke. In contrast, sweep picking is where notes on several adjacent strings are played with the same direction of pick motion. Simply finger a chord with the left (fingering) hand and sweep the chord up and down with the pick hand. As you master this you can begin to move the chord up and down the neck and speed up the process immensely. This is a major shift in thinking.
Normally, we’re fairly unconscious of our picking hand, focusing attention instead on the fingering hand. But it can be very helpful to practice the picking hand parts of a run only. Play the guitar and pick though the phrase as normal, but simply hold the fingering hand over the strings, damping them, instead of actually fretting the notes. After a few run-throughs in this manner, I usually have a much better handle on the piece.
Visualize Your Practice
You do not have to be at your instrument in order to practice! Whenever you've got a couple minutes (but not while you're driving a vehicle or operating heavy machinery), visualize your fingers, hands and feet doing exactly what they would be doing if you were at your instrument. Start slowly and precisely, and then ramp up the speed. Only visualize as fast as you can maintain precision! You will be amazed at how much of the difficulty is actually coming from the lack of a clear mental concept of the mechanics of a particular passage.
Above all, have faith. Follow this program and you really will master the material, it is inevitable. It can take longer than you first thought, but just keep at it and you will amaze yourself.
Playing Tip:
Make sure your picking hand is never balled up into a fist-like shape when you’re playing. Your hand should be in a shape like it is when you make the O.K. hand signal, with the thumb and first finger in a circular shape holding the pick, and fingers 2, 3 and 4 just about straight (especially when strumming). If you’re picking individual notes you can also use your pinky as a support or stabilizer by resting/ holding the tip of it against the guitar body. You will/can be much more articulate with your playing this way. The right hand in a fist is counter productive.
For Mind Bending Upstroke Exercises go to Page 3
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