Building Speed on Guitar

I remember the days when I struggled playing fast on the guitar. I practiced regularly with a metronome. Everything was being done correctly but still no significant results could be seen at that time. I always felt that the guitar strings are a barrier to my pick and they are not allowing me to pick fast. I wished if there could be no strings over the pickups.

The problem was that I never angled my pick correctly. Keeping the pick totally horizontal in your hands gives the best tone you can ever have but this pick position also provides the largest hindrance towards a faster picking speed. I had seen lessons about angling the pick, but I thought it to be a very insignificant thing to do. But believe me this is the only thing between you and your shredding speed. Look at the two pictures to make yourself clear about this.

This is the way I used to and many people still use to hold their pick. There is a large amount of hindrance provided by the strings and you will not be able to get super fast on the guitar anyhow.

This is the pick angling technique. The pick makes an angle of approximately 45 degrees with the strings. When you hold the pick in this way, the pick develops a tendency to glide over the strings and you will not feel resistance. 

FEW MORE IMPORTANT THINGS

See how the pick fits between the thumb and the pointer finger. You can see that the back of the pick is lying much outside. This is not what i'm trying to show. I want to tell that only the tip of the pick is hitting the strings. That is, you should not dig heavy into the strings, do not take a large front portion of the pick to hit the strings. Just use the tip of the pick.

The next thing which is very very important is, when you pick alternately, try to keep the motion a minimum. Practice picking a single string with a very very low picking hand movement. Try to minimize the motion of the pick as much as you can. 

One more thing. Some people pick with their wrist like John Petrucci, Joe Satriani etc. while there is a speed wizard Michael Angelo Batio who uses his thumb movements to pick. Given the two things, I still suggest you to kindly avoid the thumb movement and pick from the wrist itself.

Now what should be the pick size? DOES NOT MATTER!!!  Take whatever you find comfortable whether a micro pick or a giant pick.

What about thickness of the pick? ALWAYS USE A THICK PICK IF YOU REALLY WANT TO PLAY FAST!!!