Take a look with us now as we delve into tips and tricks for improving your guitar playing speed and for some practical knowledge on effectively using metronomes and other helps to improve your practice sessions.

Most aspiring guitar players today fill their heads with dreams about moving their fingers effortlessly across their fretboards with lightning quick speed and accuracy that leaves minds rocked and speakers blown. There have been a few guitarists throughout the ages of rock that have been born with an almost supernatural understanding and talent for the guitar, but that isn’t the case for most musicians. Learning to be a master of shred requires a lot of hard work, dedication, sweat, bloody fingertips, and patience.

There is a lot more to mastering speed than having a good sense of rhythm and a well-trained ear. You have to be willing to put in the time to practice, and to practice hard. If you want to learn how to blaze solos and belt out face melting guitar solos, you have to be dedicated to learning and putting into practice all you learn.

One method of improving your guitar playing speed is to use guitar backing tracks. Guitar backing tracks can help you improve your speed by playing along with other instruments in a set tempo. This can help you to take what you already know and work on perfecting those particular skills.

Another great tip for improving speed involves practicing with a metronome. It’s important to remember that before you can practice with a metronome to help you develop speed, you must first learn the technique or scale at your own speed. After you have mastered how to do the technique or how to play the scale, you can now move on to practicing to a metronome, set at whatever tempo you’d like.

It’s important to remember that a crucial aspect of developing speed is to first develop accuracy. Learning to play fast means nothing if you aren’t playing the right notes, and if you aren’t playing the right notes cleanly. If you can train yourself through much practice to be as flawless as possible in your accuracy, you will be able to easily improve your playing speed.

Many guitarists desire to be able to master the guitar and to shred along side some of the legends of rock music history. If you have the determination, the drive, and the willingness to dedicate yourself to practicing and learning, you will go pretty far, and may even accomplish your dream.

Join us as we take a look into several different methods of how to improve your guitar tone during a live performance. You can also learn the benefits of using guitar backing tracks to help perfect your skills in practice and for help developing tone live.

One of the key aspects of putting on a great live performance is having a great sounding guitar tone. There are a lot of different ways that you can improve your guitar tone during a live performance to help you achieve a professional sounding tone that will leave your audience’s ears pleased.

One of the ways you can improve your tone during a live performance is to cut back on the distortion. Too much distortion can make your notes sound thinner and cause a lot of buzzing that will take away from the rest of your performance. It’s recommended that if you need a little extra crunch on your guitar that you use an effects pedal rather than the amp settings.

Another great tip for improving guitar tone in your live performances is to use a tube amplifier. These provide a warm sounding tone and can really help to bring out the sweetness of your guitar sound.

The best way to improve your guitar tone when playing live is to remember that great tone lies in your fingertips. Developing good tone means you have to develop your techniques and skills. The best guitarist in the world could play through the worst equipment around and still make it sound good, because of his playing abilities. If you gave an amateur the best equipment and guitars money could buy, they would still sound like an amateur.

One of the best ways to perfect your techniques and skills is to practice with guitar backing tracks. Guitar backing tracks can be very beneficial for learning good improvisation techniques. Playing with guitar backing tracks can help you to be prepared for playing live and help you to develop the natural tone from your own playing style.

Guitar backing tracks can also be used to get better guitar tone by using them to play your live shows. Using guitar backing tracks for live shows are like being backed by a professional sounding band, which can help you to find a great quality tone. Guitar backing tracks are professionally recorded by seasoned musicians and can help you develop your ear along with your skills. 

You ask…”how do I find the perfect tone?

There is no perfect tone. The "ultimate" tone (The Tone) does not exist. "Tone" is a shifting object that varies depending upon song, emotional context, venue, audience, genre, physical environment, etc.

Some of the "best" guitar sounds are rather lop-sided when analyzed in isolation. I hear players all the time say they finally found the perfect tone or they're still searching for the Holy Grail of tone. Most of these people are sitting in their bedrooms or are gear collectors perpetually in search of excuses to buy more stuff. The real discovery comes when they play with a band or try recording.

In short, you can take any guitar and amp in good working order and get plenty of useful sounds.
I've gotten what I thought were perfect sounds from my guitar only to find that they didn't work at all when you take your sound out of your garage or bedroom. Instead of looking for "The Tone" you need to think about finding your place within the frequency spectrum.

Think about it this way, you've got your drummer pounding away, another guitarist, vocals, bass, plus whoever else is in your band. Say
you join a band where the other guitarist plays a Strat and a Fender Twin. With the addition of another vocalist, a lot of the spectrum is taken by instruments and voices that would compete with another guitar.

Are you going to shove another bright Strat into the mix?

Why? Rather than trying to compete (‘VOLUME WARS!’) you've got to cooperate and find a space that you can occupy that does not step all over other people that might just mean finding a sound that you don't like (say, in isolation) but sits well in the mix or work well in comparison to some other guitar tone in the group. That might mean, in the above context, finding a thicker sound (say a Marshall-type middominated sound with humbuckers) and let the Strat guy have his sparkle and snap.

Likewise, in some situations, a paper-thin guitar sound will cut through a mix that is heavy on bass and mids. Your tone may sound like crap, if someone soloed your mixer channel, but remember the whole is greater than the parts so what might sound like crap by itself could very well sound super in the total mix.

So, in your band or when you record, the vocals and drums are going to be the least flexible elements. Start there, let the bassist take the
bottom, and then divide the relatively small portion of space left over between the guitars. And when the vocalists are singing select a sound that will compliment. When there is a vocal-free space you can go for something with more substance to it you might find that in any given song, you'll need two or three different sounds for different areas of the piece.

Your tone will sound differently at practice, at sound check, and every venue, even if you use the exact same equipment and settings. Be prepared to alter it based on the room, temperature, humidity, and the amount of people and sound absorbing objects in the room.
And, lastly, your tone is going to be the product of being reasonable and considerate. Cooperate with your band members. You will not be appreciated if your ‘awesome tone’ conflicts with what other people are doing.

You are the guitar player. Unless you are also the singer or you are a featured guitar god, you will be pretty much ignored. Find a cool groove to get into with the drummer and the bassist. That's how to be a musician, and not just a guitarist.
What’s that? How do you sound like Eric Johnson/Eddie Van Halen/Yngwie etc.?

If you want to sound like EJ or whoever then do not read this!

Instead, take out a loan on a vintage, pre-CBS Strat ($12,500) + vintage TS808 Tube Screamer ($500) + vintage Marshall JTM45($1200) then you will have all the gear necessary to sound like EJ…note that I said you'd have the gear for the sound not the sound itself.

For Example, please realize that just because you own a 1954 Strat, wo Fender Deluxe Reverbs and a vintage 50 Watt Marshall, you probably won’t sound exactly like Eric Johnson… Don't get me wrong, that would be a good starting point. But great tone comes from the heart, soul and fingers of the person playing. Equipment, in and of itself, is only part of the battle. The remainder, literally, rests in your hands and fingers.


Wonder why I would say a thing like that? Read on!

Amp/Effects Debates

Don't get caught up in the tube vs. solid state vs. digital debate. That is a never-ending argument that will probably never be won. Great tones can be coaxed out of any kind of amp as long as it is well designed and in good working order.

If Mike Stern and B. B. King can get their sounds out of, in Stern's case an ancient Yamaha G100, and in King's case an old Gibson Lab Series amp, then the matter is really pointless. I've seen many tube purists who couldn't tell the difference between solid state and tube when they had to rely solely on their ears. So, trust YOUR ears and don't get something merely because it has tubes -- there are many of those amps that sound plenty bad.

DO get something that sounds good to YOU!
Do get an amp that will be reliable, durable, and versatile, and inspires you to play it!
Don't worry so much about the power or wattage an amp has.

Tube amps are going to sound better cranked, so lower wattage amps tend to be favored. When playing within the context of a band, your going to mic the amps anyways, so loudness shouldn’t be so much a factor as some folks think.

If you are using a tube amp be sure that the tubes are in good shape. Don't settle for the cheapest you can find; you'd be better off shelling out the bucks for some good ones. Be aware that different speaker sizes can radically affect your sound.

Some people swear that a 4X10 cabinet loaded with Jensen speakers is the only way to go (i.e., the Fender Bassman sound) while others will only play through a 2X12 cabinet loaded with Celestion speakers. Try them all out and decide for yourself. Great sounds can be obtained
from all of them. A cab with 4X10s typically sounds punchier and more immediate while a cab loaded with 12s will sound looser and will allow for a more compressed sound. Also, a closed-back cab like a big 4X12 will generally sound much darker than one with an open back configuration.

Never base your equipment decisions on aesthetics. Considerations like tweed, leopard skin, and boa snake coverings, chicken-head knobs, or metal armor should be secondary to the sound. Never base your amp purchase decisions on the reviews you find in guitar magazines.

The current crop of periodicals has, over the last few years, become nothing but propaganda machines for manufacturers (who, incidentally, are paying their bills through advertising dollars). In short, you simply can't trust them.

Go to online resources for the reviews that real owners have posted. But, you must be careful here as well. Most of these reviews are posted by well-meaning folks just like you and me but most of them have been posted by people after just a few days of owning a piece of gear. You can’t accurately know the in’s/out’s, and shortcomings of an amp that quickly.

Look for reviews from people who have owned and used the amp, or guitar, for at least six months or more. And every now and then you'll find people making second reviews of the same piece after some use.

Effects sound best in moderation. Though, in the pursuit of weird sounds it is fun to hook together an altogether immoderate quantity of effects. It all depends upon your sound. Sometimes it's cool to use old digital effects from the 80s and early 90s the ones that sound horrendous in their attempt to emulate tube preamps; they get this terrible fuzz, which can be accentuated by clipping the input way too far. Some love it.

But for most folks, the general rule is the fewer the better. Effects can become a crutch for sloppy playing and a general lack of skill. Try cutting back on what you use if you are practicing, and trying to get better. Use the effects when you perform…you’ll get much better in a shorter period of time.

Try and keep fresh batteries in your effects, or use a power source. Some people claim that weak batteries will get that 'vintage sound.' I can't tell the difference. Maybe you can-I can’t, and most tests won’t show an audible difference, but when you perform, no one will ever know the difference. In this instance, better safe than sorry-use fresh power.

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