I’ve been working on so many other musical projects that I haven’t played guitar in quite a while. But ! Back when I was playing guitar every day and tracking my BPM progress in a practice notebook, there is one huge lesson I learned from practicing the Speed Kills warmups as my absolute “must do this when first picking up the guitar” discipline. Start the metronome BPM at 40 BPM (16th notes) every time, play for 1 minute to get the beat down, then TURN OFF the metronome, and play the exercises for at least 15 minutes, usually more like 25 mins. After a month or more of that, then increase BPM to 60BPM then 70 BPM, all these should be easy speeds, relaxed. The main thing I learned was about feeling fretting-hand tension. Previously anytime the BPM’s got to rock & metal speeds, my fretting hand and entire arm would uncontrollably tense up like “fight or flight” to get up to speed, and fingers would not behave. Now the interesting thing was that Doug suggested, “Try tapping your foot” – and when all tensed up like that, it’s basically impossible. So my response to the picking speed survey would be, (unless you are a speed god like MAB where speed comes “easily”), always start the Speed Kills warmups at much lower than 50% of max playing speed.. maybe that is 40 BPM. Ensure that the hand and fingers are totally relaxed and not stressing out at all to play at that speed. After months of playing like this, the feeling of relaxation & not-relaxed is easy to identify, and the fretting hand should naturally feel like it is ready to play faster than the metronome, like a rushing feeling. “Natural Speed” seems to increase when exercising in the relaxed practice state. That’s the secret, Don’t play repetitive exercises when tensed up, it’s bad practice. If that means lower BPM, then play at lower BPM. The Speed & Accuracy exercises can be approached the same way, especially the single-string versions, better to play slow & relaxed, than to rush.
I'm an intermediate student of Metal Method. I play seitannic heavy metal. All Kale Seitan! ♯ ♮ ♭ ø ° Δ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
And on the Seventh Day, Mustaine said: ∇ ⨯ E = - ∂B / ∂t ; and there was Thrash; and it had a ♭3; and it was good.
.
