Are There Exercises To Increase How "Quick" Your Fingers Are?

[TSJMajesty]

TL;DR- Read 1st 2 and last 2 paragraphs.

I'm not talking about how fast you can play notes; I'm talking about how fast your fingers move toward the fretboard.

In trying to get a certain few riffs up to speed, I notice I can play them faster than I can play them cleanly. Iow, I'm not making contact with the fret at the exact time I need to, and I suspect to improve that, my fingers need to be 'quicker.'

I mean, if I play an A, B, C, A, B, C with 3 different fingers, those fingers don't each individually have to move as fast as if I play, A, B, A, B, A, B.

I've noticed, when I watch my finger movements, they kind of "lazily" hit the notes. So as long as I land them at the right time, I'm ok. But I'm terribly slow at trills, for example. Which is because my individual finger speed just plain sucks.

I've watched different people play the same solos, at the same tempo, and I can clearly see the difference in how quick their fingers are.

You how you sometimes tap on a desk, with all your fingers, 1 after the other, maybe while you're thinking, or bored? I imagine most of us have done that. Try doing it the reverse direction you're used to doing it. Yeah!

I'm wondering if maybe there are "desk tapping" exercises that might help increase that type of finger speed...? I have no idea if that sort of thing would help, but I did notice that when I tried to do any sort of "drill" with my fingers on a desk, the movements were really erratic.

I saw this one guy on YT, who showed a "workout" in which you simply touch each of your fingers to your thumb, saying you can do this sort of thing while sitting in traffic, or watching a movie. And to make up different combinations of the order you tap each finger to your thumb. He claimed it helps.

And because I know my fingers move slow, I've worked very hard on keeping them close to the fretboard, because you know, D/T=V. But I'm also wondering if I should maybe practice keeping them far from the fretboard, on purpose, to see if it helps build that quickness.

I ask this question because I'm still not convinced that these limits aren't simply genetic. Like I've said before, I don't care how much you practice running, you're never going to be an NFL safety, or an MLB 2nd base stealer, unless you were born with that potential.

Sure you have to practice, but I know there are limits.

I just want to find out if I'm missing out on ways to truly reach my own potential. I want to learn the Mr. Crowley solo, for example. But I haven't been able to get any faster at it by simply playing it at slightly faster tempos. It just starts to fall apart.

So if there are things I can work on to make my fingers quicker, I'd love to know what they are! In all the YT lessons on "How To Shred in 1 Month", I've never seen this specific topic discussed (except for maybe that one I mentioned about the thumb & fingers above.)

 

[FuzzyAce]

I saw this one guy on YT, who showed a "workout" in which you simply touch each of your fingers to your thumb, saying you can do this sort of thing while sitting in traffic, or watching a movie. And to make up different combinations of the order you tap each finger to your thumb. He claimed it helps.

I could see that helping with warming up and muscle memory. I'm trying it now (well, not as I type ) and can feel the joints loosening up. Starting slow then building up speed. I do think genetics plays a role, but doesn't mean anything other than some have to work harder to get similar results. Usually that leads to players coming up with their own techniques so they can express themselves, which is a good thing.
But as far as building up dexterity/timing, only good warmups and practice practice practice makes it better and cleaner.

 

[Alex Kenivel]

I saw this one guy on YT, who showed a "workout" in which you simply touch each of your fingers to your thumb, saying you can do this sort of thing while sitting in traffic, or watching a movie. And to make up different combinations of the order you tap each finger to your thumb. He claimed it helps.

I've been doing this since I was a child, skipping a certain finger each time. My dad taught me this when I was very small.

Not sure if it has helped but it's something I do

 

[FuzzyAce]

I've been doing this since I was a child, skipping a certain finger each time. My dad taught me this when I was very small.

Not sure if it has helped but it's something I do

My wife does it, but it's because she's adding up how much stuff costs in her head.

 

[FuzzyAce]

She's no mathematician, but God I love her.

 

[TubeStack]

 

[Warmart]

I'd bet Rock Discipline has some exercises just for this. It has pretty much everything, if you can bring yourself to actually have the discipline required. And probably hefty amounts of caffeine and/or other stimulants!

 

[Alex Kenivel]

other stimulants

 

[la szum]

TL;DR- Read 1st 2 and last 2 paragraphs.

I'm not talking about how fast you can play notes; I'm talking about how fast your fingers move toward the fretboard.

In trying to get a certain few riffs up to speed, I notice I can play them faster than I can play them cleanly. Iow, I'm not making contact with the fret at the exact time I need to, and I suspect to improve that, my fingers need to be 'quicker.'

I mean, if I play an A, B, C, A, B, C with 3 different fingers, those fingers don't each individually have to move as fast as if I play, A, B, A, B, A, B.

I've noticed, when I watch my finger movements, they kind of "lazily" hit the notes. So as long as I land them at the right time, I'm ok. But I'm terribly slow at trills, for example. Which is because my individual finger speed just plain sucks.

I've watched different people play the same solos, at the same tempo, and I can clearly see the difference in how quick their fingers are.

You how you sometimes tap on a desk, with all your fingers, 1 after the other, maybe while you're thinking, or bored? I imagine most of us have done that. Try doing it the reverse direction you're used to doing it. Yeah!

I'm wondering if maybe there are "desk tapping" exercises that might help increase that type of finger speed...? I have no idea if that sort of thing would help, but I did notice that when I tried to do any sort of "drill" with my fingers on a desk, the movements were really erratic.

I saw this one guy on YT, who showed a "workout" in which you simply touch each of your fingers to your thumb, saying you can do this sort of thing while sitting in traffic, or watching a movie. And to make up different combinations of the order you tap each finger to your thumb. He claimed it helps.

And because I know my fingers move slow, I've worked very hard on keeping them close to the fretboard, because you know, D/T=V. But I'm also wondering if I should maybe practice keeping them far from the fretboard, on purpose, to see if it helps build that quickness.

I ask this question because I'm still not convinced that these limits aren't simply genetic. Like I've said before, I don't care how much you practice running, you're never going to be an NFL safety, or an MLB 2nd base stealer, unless you were born with that potential.

Sure you have to practice, but I know there are limits.

I just want to find out if I'm missing out on ways to truly reach my own potential. I want to learn the Mr. Crowley solo, for example. But I haven't been able to get any faster at it by simply playing it at slightly faster tempos. It just starts to fall apart.

So if there are things I can work on to make my fingers quicker, I'd love to know what they are! In all the YT lessons on "How To Shred in 1 Month", I've never seen this specific topic discussed (except for maybe that one I mentioned about the thumb & fingers above.)

I can't help with finger speed but I can get 6 pack abs at any age for just a one time fee of $19.95.

I think there is a ceiling, too. Others may quibble.... but even the fastest of the fastest have a ceiling
where they max out. Ceilings are real. Hit your head and you'll find out.

Good luck, Tom. I know you've been working on this a long time and have been pushing your limits
harder than most.

 

[DrewJD82]

unless you were born with that potential.

 

[Byrdman]

I have been going down this rabbit hole for over a year. I finally broke down and started taking lessons from a real person vs YT videos. Here is what my instructor has done so far to help me. I still have a lot of work ahead of me but my speed is increasing and accuracy is getting a lot better at higher speeds. I hope some of these can help, they have for me.

First, make sure technique is spot on. I had a lot of wasted finger motion that killed my speed plus my alternate picking sucked.
Second, a relax picking hand/arm/shoulder/back is essential. Tension kills speed and timing.
Third, break the sections that are giving you trouble and isolate them into a repeatable burst exercises. Start slow and increase tempo with the above 1 & 2.

Last, Work-Work-and more Work. Even though some people can have better fast twitch muscles and nerves, nothing replaces hard work and the older you get the more work it takes especially for me at 55. Unfortunately no shortcuts...

you probably know all the above, and so did I, but what I was doing and what I needed to be doing were 2 different things. Good Luck!

 

[PLX]

 

[DrewJD82]

Second, a relax picking hand/arm/shoulder/back is essential. Tension kills speed and timing.

This is 100% the biggest thing that I know held me back for a long time. I couldn't grasp the idea of loosening up, I'd physically loosen up on the pick or just flop my arm there, but all that would go out the window once I started playing and the faster I tried to go, the more I'd be pinching that pick between my fingers and essentially flexing my forearm in the process.

Once I realized how much I was tightening up my forearm, that caused my wrist to stiffen, which forced to move my whole hand that much more. It was an epiphany moment for sure, like "Oh! I don't have to push down on these strings like I'm moving 10lb stones with my fingertips! There's no need for anything to be flexed or tightened up!" It was like everything from the shoulder down was 'gritting and bearing it' as if it provided more gas for playing fast, when all it did was anchor me in place.

 

[Joshual-L]

I’m gonna be rude lol.

There’s absolutely no shortcut.

Practice at slow tempo with a metronome and make sure you play conscientiously every note on time.
And then increase slowly the tempo.

I was always a fast player but it’s been two years now that I have to deal with ulnar nerve problems.
The first year I could barely move my pinky. It’s was a nightmare (its’ my job).

It seems to get a little better now but i forced myself to start from scratch and be really precise. Also had to rethink every position of my hand and fingers.

 

[2112]

I'd start by working on minimising tension. This is a great exercise that is also nice because you're playing music rather than a bunch of finger calisthenics.

 

[woody]

There's also this:


The TLW is:

We can play faster flurries of notes than we can cognitively steer our fingers.
To enable us to do so our brain "chunks" the information: We can trigger a series of motions instead of a single event.
Like here: (Thanks PLX)

Most people can tap their fingers like this pretty fast, but tapping them from the index finger to the pinky is usually hard (or vice versa).
So, one direction of finger tapping is chunked in our brain, one is not.

In order to get fingers moving faster beyond a certain individual speed limit, it's usually necessary to learn to chunk the pattern of movement you want to execute.
Do it with a bunch of patterns and you can play fast and without strain, stringing together chunks of ideas.

 

[TSJMajesty]

There's also this:


The TLW is:

We can play faster flurries of notes than we can cognitively steer our fingers.
To enable us to do so our brain "chunks" the information: We can trigger a series of motions instead of a single event.
Like here: (Thanks PLX)

Most people can tap their fingers like this pretty fast, but tapping them from the index finger to the pinky is usually hard (or vice versa).
So, one direction of finger tapping is chunked in our brain, one is not.

In order to get fingers moving faster beyond a certain individual speed limit, it's usually necessary to learn to chunk the pattern of movement you want to execute.
Do it with a bunch of patterns and you can play fast and without strain, stringing together chunks of ideas.

I know about that, but that's not really what I'm asking about here.

 

[woody]

I know about that, but that's not really what I'm asking about here.

I get that feeling.
Thing is, chunking is messy.
You can't do it "right" from the start. You have to embrace the slop, wade through the slop and trust the process to let your brain find the right way to get to precision.
We all know the "perfect practice makes perfect" trope. Most people think it means that we need to execute stuff perfectly in practice to ingrain good patterns into our muscle memory*.

No human learnt to walk this way. It's trying, failing, trying, doing it wrong, trying, rinse repeat until we just don't fall on our faces anymore.

You spoke of trills.
I bet you can do one really fast hammer on/pull off. (See how this is really one gesture and not "a hammer on, bringing the finger down on the string and then, after that, doing a pull off"?)
Can you do two in row fast?
What about three?
Or four?
Now, there's a chunk.
Now you have to learn to string them together, play out of one four trill chunks into the next four trill chunk seamlessly.
And you need to do it badly at first, because it's too fast to command every finger to do every single stroke.

Our bodies can do amazing stuff that is impossible for us to fully understand or intentionally steer the whole way through.
Like walking. I don't know how I do it, I just do it. And I don't even need to concentrate on it.
Finding a constructive way of "controlled uncontrolled" practice is necessary to unlock certain skills, and speed is one of them.
You need a decent foundational technique. You can't just flail limbs at the guitar right from the start and hope that some day it will miraculously be "Mr. Crowley" in the end. You need a plan and a strategy.
But "intentional movement" is incredibly limited. Our bodies do stuff well beyond our imagination all the time. Tap into that power!

*for many things this is very good practice.
Not for speed and wholly new movement patterns that we can't yet fully visualize in our minds, though.

 

[Dave Lewis]

 

[TSJMajesty]

@woody I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to say, but let me give an example.

I have a solo I'm working on that's all sextuplets, all legato, that starts- e 15h16h18 12h13h15. The tempo is 109 bpm, but the best I can do the whole solo is 100. So 600 notes per minute.

So how do I get that last 10% speed? Play those 3 hammer-on notes for 1 minute, rest for 30 seconds, then go again? Been doing that.

Like your trill example above..., yeah, I can probably do 2 quick 12-13-15 back-to-back @ 109. But I can't do several at 109. After about 4 I start missing the downbeat. And there are still tricky parts in that solo that I have to isolate and practice slower, and I just plowed through it many many times at my max speed, and it remains sloppy in that section. So I don't agree with "It's trying, failing, trying, doing it wrong, trying, rinse repeat until we just don't fall on our faces anymore."

I feel like maybe I've topped out. I don't know how to make my fingers go any faster! I've been practicing this solo for probably 2 years. (I've been playing a total of 40 years or so, the past 5 years really seriously focused on technique and improving my speed, with the goal of playing some of the solos that have always been out of reach.)

I can pick sextuplets at about a max of 115 bpm, if it's a simple scalar riff, but that added speed is only because I don't have to waste finger strength on the hammer-ons/pull-offs.

I suppose I'm still improving, but the gains are getting more and more 'hard-fought.'