Practicing with increasing BPMs

  • Thread starter Thread starter phillybhatesme
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phillybhatesme

phillybhatesme

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When you’re practicing something and increasing the speed, do you increase by a certain number on the metronome?
I sometimes feel like 5 is too slow when practicing real slow, but 10 is too fast when sped up.

You guys switch it up?
In b4 u guiz r practicing?
 
Depends really. If I’m simply warming up, I will likely increase anywhere from 10-20. When I’m getting closer to my top end it’ll be 5-10.
 
I have one of those ancient click/dial metronomes, so I usually just go up one click at a time. Which I think is around 3-4 bpm.
 
Those increments of how much I increase it are so dependent on what piece it is and which subdivisions I use, which I also think helps a lot to play with different types of subdivisions to feel the rhythm from all the different angles. Helps more in musicality & feel imo more even than just technique

Another method that can help gain speed is to play the part in the different dotted rhythms (assuming the notes are in a straight rhythm). Doing the 2 types of dotted rhythms changes the relative spacings of the notes that can help your fingers train how they transition to each one more efficiently

Also, you gotta be careful because often times as you gradually increase the tempo, everything will sound in control & ok up until a certain threshold where you can’t pull it off anymore at that speed and when that happens the answer isn’t too just keep playing slow, gradually upping the tempo, but to really dissect what your fingers are doing inadequately to get to the root of the problem. This is the mentally taxing part of practice (where the real practice part actually is imo). If it feels like meditation or relaxing you’re not really practicing. This is though just my approach in classical guitar that I’ve been trained to do fwiw. I don’t practice electric these days
 
Also, focus on your muscle tension and breathing.
Try to maintain those while you're increasing BPM.
Hate when I'm wailing and get distracted by tension in my forearms.
Or forgetting to breathe. :ROFLMAO:
 
My guitar teacher changed my whole perspective on this. He had me play this one scale run as fast as I could cleanly. Then he had me play it 1 time only a day at half the bpm for 2 weeks. No increasing, no playing it more than once. When we tested my top speed after 2 weeks I was able to play it 20bpm faster and it was clean.

So long story short, it's muscle memory and you don't have to push yourself just do it consistently.
 
ClintN667 said:
My guitar teacher changed my whole perspective on this. He had me play this one scale run as fast as I could cleanly. Then he had me play it 1 time only a day at half the bpm for 2 weeks. No increasing, no playing it more than once. When we tested my top speed after 2 weeks I was able to play it 20bpm faster and it was clean.

So long story short, it's muscle memory and you don't have to push yourself just do it consistently.
Click to expand...

This works for me too. I find if I play something slowly, in time and clean and then test myself (either with the song or metronome), I can increase my speed.
 
In high school I’d bump it up 1bpm at a time, but occasionally I’d do what Petrucci suggested in Rock Discipline and crank it up just a bit higher than I knew I could do consistently and stay there for a couple minutes, so when I came back down to a normal speed I knew I could do, it was even easier.

That’s how I still warm up these days, though I quit practicing about 20 years ago, I just do chromatics to limber up my fingers at a slower tempo then do a couple runs where I’m pushing myself a little harder than I should for a warmup then bring it back down, rinse and repeat until the fingers don’t feel like they’re getting rigor mortis.
 
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