Advice on Improving / Increasing Speed/Chops in Jazz

[jamiehenderson1993]

Wherever I look for educational material on increasing speed/chops on guitar, it seems to be primarily associated with Metal / Rock.

Any advice on improving my speed for Jazz?

[AllanAllen]

Speed is a technical skill and not limited to a genre. So whatever works for Metal will work for Jazz. This book was recommended to me by a great player. I have not worked on it yet.

https://a.co/d/4Rwau4w

Speed comes from smoothness and smoothness comes from familiarity. An elegant way to say, you can’t play fast if you don’t know where you’re going.

[James W]

Not sure where to begin answering this question.

But I think it boils down to two things - physical technique/ability and (for jazz) development of improvisational reflexes.

The first thing - the physical technique - is actually not dissimilar to that of rock/metal. You don't mention whether you mean picking or legato. If you mean picking, then I can recommend checking out Troy Grady's content. But I'll summarise it: the best place to start with assessing your picking speed (plectrum-picking that is) is the tremolo. If you find your limit with this is sixteenths at 110-120 BPM and it feels uncomfortable, then it requires experimenting with ways of picking that are quite a bit faster than that. So try picking from the wrist, elbow, fingers or forearm and find something that feels fast, smooth and comfortable. You might only be able to do it for a short time but it should feel like it has potential to go on for longer. Once the motion is established then you can slow down and start syncing it with the fretting hand. That's just the tip of the iceberg but it is pretty fundamental.

Now, the thing with jazz is that we like to be able to play lines that often are written by horn players. That's quite a technical challenge and IMO best tackled using economy picking. Also slurs play an important role in getting the phrasing/articulation horn-like. Speaking of slurs, the way to improve legato is start slow making sure all the notes are clearly articulated. Gradually build speed and pay attention to string changes. Often with legato I have found it is not brute force that is required, but some experimentation to find the optimal part of the finger to make the note sound clearly.

So that's physical technique. But developing jazz line-building chops, ways of varying lines and knowledge of the fretboard etc. Just take a lot of time and best done slowly and methodically at first, chipping away at small bits which come together over time. At least such is my understanding. It's a case of developing the ear and connecting it to the guitar, and the records you listen to.

That's my take FWIW.

[pamosmusic]

Jack Zucker’s book is kind of a specific thing so it might need a little adaptation if you’re a bebopper, but it’s very good.

[wolflen]

For me watching musicians play intricate melodic lines with precision and speed is the realization of a intense and dedicated study for a long period of time.

All genres use speed in parts of their repatriate..yes it is impressive to watch and hear.

Today there are many of "how to" increase speed in playing resources.

I break it down this way for my playing:

Do I WANT to

Do I HAVE to

I have seen and heard Larry Coryell and John McLaughlin and others many times and wondered how long it took them to play that fast.

But it was much more than speed..they were playing MUSIC.

You could begin at a very basic level. Play Happy Birthday at 40BPM and increase it by X until you get to 200bpm

Ben Monder said he starts with 10bpm on some studies.

All in all what you have to discover is..what is your ability to play fast and accept it.

Some try to go beyond what they are capable of playing and the result is, of course, endless frustration.

I would like to play as fast as some of the guitar gods..but alas.

[Jimmy blue note]

Speed in jazz may, at first be an objective in itself, but to approach it as such, as an objective in itself, especially on the guitar, can be a distracting, if not self defeating pursuit if that's your focus.
The impressive linearity associated with jazz performance is part kinesthetics (finger facility) and to a much greater degree, conceptual and linear control of melody, which is, by the nature of the music, infinitely varied through melodic integrity and an intimate knowledge of embellishments, ornaments, harmonic transformation, sequencing, motific development... and that's just for starters.
Jazz musicians don't necessarily play for speed, but to do justice to the the speed at which they can create musical statements. So it's not a matter of mastering a finite set of "licks" or elaborate lines, but rather it's a matter of being able to articulately play an infinite set of combinations with grace and feeling.

Of course to do this, you do need mastery of building blocks, that then allows you to form them into an arc and real time composition in the moment. THAT, you can't work out ahead of time.

Speed in improvisation takes being able to think clearly and with control. To play fast, start by thinking slow, play slow and be clear with what you're doing, where you're going and what lies ahead...with intention. That can be the opposite of the louder,faster,higher approach of rock.

Learn to play with control to create clarity in the line. Learn the sets of embellishment and linear tools (Oliver Nelson's Patterns of Improvisation, Ted Dunbar's A Stytem of Tonal Convergence for Improvisors Composers and Arrangers, David Baker's Techniques of Improvisation (many volumes of this relentless work), Maury Deutsch's books on melodic rhythms... these were all really helpful for me).
Learn to use these possibilities, learn to HEAR slowly and work your way up. Learn to hear complex harmony before you try to imitate chromatic lines, and be patient. There is no fast track to thinking fast in jazz.

Playing slow will make you address the ways around the fingerboard that will free you from clichés of habitual nonsense licks.

Listen to a lot of jazz and know what they're doing... not just the guitarist, but the horn, the piano, the bass. In jazz, you're not merely a soloist but one voice talking a complex and cooperative language in a conversation. It takes TIME to understand this. Until you do, you're not even walking, you're just running in place until you exhaust yourself and your listener.

[alpop]

Here's an idea:

Get the Charlie Parker Omnibook.

Learn 1 bebop head per week.

Practice that head with a metronome for 20 minutes a day.

Start out at a tempo that you can play smoothly, gradually increasing tempo over time as fluency and familiarity develops.

Do this every day and don't get distracted. Just do it, and then forget about it and move on to other things.

Don't judge yourself, just enjoy the time spent, and stay relaxed.

As your tempos increase try playing around with the metronome by jacking up the speed and work on a few small sections only.

After one week change tunes. Don't worry about forgetting the previous tune, just move on. Your goal here is not really about learning repertoire, but rather using bebop vocab to work on your technique. A useful side effect may be that these sounds will seep in rather than scale patterns or some other repetitive technical exercises.

I am quite convinced that no singular picking technique is going to work for everyone.

My belief is that everyone must find their own way of picking, with physical relaxation, and calm, clear, mental focus as a basis.

[nyc chaz]

All good advice given above especially the idea of using a metronome.Economy picking to me is the best way to improve your speed.Chris Brooks Economy Picking Technique is a good book on the subject.If you do all the exercises in that book,i can pretty much say with certainty you will be able to pick cleaner and faster.

[Christian Miller]

Wherever I look for educational material on increasing speed/chops on guitar, it seems to be primarily associated with Metal / Rock.

Any advice on improving my speed for Jazz?

Well sheer brute speed requires a good optimised pick technique. So it's not that different really. I advocate what is called USX by Troy Grady because it's easy to learn if you apply yourself and know how to practice things like that.

That's rest strokes on downstrokes into the guitar, with the up stroke coming out of the guitar. Like Gyspy style picking, but loads of players do something like that all over, with all sorts of different wrist positions. Troy has done quite a few free videos on this. I learned GJ pickin. Some more in depth thoughts here.

Benosn picking is variant of this. Players like Cecil Alexander align with this approach.

Economy styles are also easy to learn and very popular.

Alternate picking is generally the hardest, but has some really strong advantages in terms of coupling the hand movement to the beat. But there are mechanical aspects to solve. You can go from USX into alternate picking. According to Troy that's how Mike Stern does it. I haven't examined Jonathan Kreisberg's style much, but he's one of the most even alt pickers in the world, so I probably should. Pat Martino is another legend.

Left hand speed? Usually the opposite problem. We can all wiggle fingers quickly, the problem tends to be more in fretting notes accurately and in time. This is something best practiced slow and even, and I like to do it without picking at all. Metronome on a nice slow setting like 80 bpm and just hammer on lightly the notes of bebop head or a II V I lick or whatever else you fancy. Amazingly hard at first. Then when you can do that half the click tempo and have a click every other beat. Halve again... and again.

IMPORTANT - jazz guitarists do not buy and large pick every note. That's a misconception. As DJG points out - even Pat Martino uses left hand slurs. It helps with the phrasing if you slur from the up beats onto the beat and it can get you out of a tight spot too.

You know I've always found the difficulty to be more the latter. But Ive always been an agile player, to a fault. Fast tempos in jazz are not as fast as you think always.

So efficient movements (sweeps, hammers and pull offs) often tend to rush. The challenge is (at least for me) to make sure those things really happen in time. Economy picking is especially hard to tame in this respect. Many players in this style have a tendency to rush, but there are some who have conquered it. Adam Rogers above all - amazing pocket. Ben Monder also springs to mind. Frank Gambale said he learned economy/speed picking in an afternoon and then it took him ten years to get it in time.

USX can have similar issues.

Choose your poison.

I practice with a metronome and look at waveforms on a DAW for maximum nerdery, but tbh I can hear if I'm rushing.

[Christian Miller]

Oh yeah - transcribe.

I know it sounds unrelated, but you can obsess about pick technique too much. The thing is - if you can hear a phrase that more than 50% of the battle.

Most players who struggle with technique are learning enough music by ear. It's amazing what the body will do sometimes if you can clearly hear the thing you are going to play.

[pauln]

Wherever I look for educational material on increasing speed/chops on guitar, it seems to be primarily associated with Metal / Rock.

Any advice on improving my speed for Jazz?

How fast are you now? How fast do you want to play?

There are two was to answer these questions;
Beats per minute (BPM) or Notes per second (NPS)

Regarding playing speed, BPM conventionally assumes eighth notes

The conversion BPM to NPS is
BPM / 60 x 2
so 120 BPM is 120 /60 x 2 = 4 NPS

The conversion NPS to BPM is
NPS / 2 * 60
so 4 NPS is 4 / 2 x 60 = 120 BPM

[brent.h]

I agree with everything said here. The only thing I'll add is what Denis Chang mentioned in a video once. I'm paraphrasing here, but speed in rock and speed in jazz are different.

Yes, dedication, intentionality, finesse are factors that affect the overall development of speed, but you also have to consider the nature of a speedy line in rock vs a speedy line in the jazz idiom.

Very generally speaking, rock lines tend to be linear & predictable while jazz lines tend to be angular & unpredictable. Again, this is not to say rock lines are so much easier to execute than jazz lines (and therefore have lower musical value or whatever), but the complexity of a bebop style line poses significant challenges to a jazz guitarist. Just being able to coordinate your hands to produce an angular melody with leaps and string skips is something that the typical rock or rock blues player doesn't have to deal with - they can fall back on comfortable pentatonic boxes, linear scale runs, alternate picking. This could explain the ubiquity of rock/shred guitar method books in comparison to jazz guitar method books.

[starjasmine]

Oh heeeere we go down another rabbit hole...!

Full disclosure: I've got reasonably good chops but I'm not a speed metal guy. I'm not suggeting that I'm any sort of expert on speed picking. I've been working on improving my picking speed lately, tho, because I ran into a lick that I can't play and it bugs me! So the following is just what has worked for me as I have pursued this effort, which is not yet complete...

I think pauln asked the definitive qualifying questions: how fast are you now and how fast do you want to be?
That is going to inform a lot of choices. Instead of timing your BPM, maybe just tell us (or show us) a song you can play and one that you want to be able to play.

The other thing someone else said ... maybe it was Christian... is don't be afraid to try a LOT of things.

The thing I'll add that has been implied but not said outright is that speedy mechanical technique takes YEARS of practice, so pack your patience. In one of Paul Gilbert's online lessons, he said that it took seven or eight years to play like that ... and he was referring to ONE LICK (the infamous "Paul Gilbert Lick" - google it). But the ability to play that one lick super clean at blazing speed required mastery of a variety of fundamentals, building stamina, and cultivating a speedy motor reflex. So don't frustrate yourself by setting unrealistic goals. Just add five minutes of speed picking work to your daily practice routine and work on other things, too.

Paraphrasing Jimmy blue note, to play fast you have to be able to think fast. And to think fast you have to go slowly enough to know exactly what you are trying to do immediately. If you hesitate at all, you cannot execute cleanly at fast tempos. But I'll throw one more idea in, and that's approximating the middle from the ends. Alternate between playing as slowly as necessary to execute every idea cleanly, musically, and in time - and just going for raw speed no matter how sloppy it is. Don't do this on the bandstand, of course, it's a practice-room thing. (Full disclosure, this idea lifted from Troy Grady videos.) Eventually you will narrow the gap between your top clean speed and the hyperspeed picking that is fast but sloppy.

Troy Grady and Martin Miller have also both posed the idea that you don't learn to run by walking progressively faster. Although running and walking have some overlapping requirements, like balance, running is a different motion than walking, and to learn that motion you have to try to run. And fall down a lot, pick yourself up, and try again. This is the rationale for playing faster than you can play cleanly: play at the speed at which the desired picking motion appears, to teach yourself the picking mechanics, even if you can't quite do them perfectly. Eventually you will learn how to control those mechanics by alternating between totally clean in-control playing and faster-but-sloppier playing.

Troy also points out in one of his videos that speed picking uses a different set of muscles in a different way than other plectrum techniques, and that when you are new to the movements, those muscles will tire out quickly. You might be able to do a nice, clean, speedy tremolo pick on one string for only a second or two before the muscles involved get tired and can no longer perform the motion correctly. So, like a sprinter, you do short bursts and then rest to allow your body to recuperate. Then try again. You might spend a week or three being able to tremolo pick for only a second or two before you get to three seconds. This is all part of the learning curve and building stamina. So during that recuperative down time, you can practice chord melody, or spelling arpeggios, or sight-reading or (OMG) LEARNING TUNES! .... whatever you want to do to allow your muscles to recuperate so that you practice the CORRECT movement instead of the incorrect one.

OK that was more of a brain dump than I expected to blurt out, but... I hope it was helpful. Definitely check out Troy's stuff. You can get quite a bit out of all the free material he has posted to YT. For me, being able to see the motion is more helpful than reading a description of how to do it.

[pauln]

Oh heeeere we go down another rabbit hole...!

Wow, that is one of the longest posts around here that I think I agree with in full.

Only thing I would add is the idea that your fastest solid level of playing mechanics should be a comfortable margin well above the level you express in musical performance. On stage you need some "head room" to manage musical judgement beyond the controlled narrow scope of perfect speed tests in home practice.

[gvurrdon]

It's amazing what the body will do sometimes if you can clearly hear the thing you are going to play.

I'm reminded of this comment by Bruce Welch in an interview about learning a Buddy Holly intro:

[pamosmusic]

Paraphrasing Jimmy blue note, to play fast you have to be able to think fast. And to think fast you have to go slowly enough to know exactly what you are trying to do immediately. If you hesitate at all, you cannot execute cleanly at fast tempos. But I'll throw one more idea in, and that's approximating the middle from the ends. Alternate between playing as slowly as necessary to execute every idea cleanly, musically, and in time - and just going for raw speed no matter how sloppy it is. Don't do this on the bandstand, of course, it's a practice-room thing. (Full disclosure, this idea lifted from Troy Grady videos.) Eventually you will narrow the gap between your top clean speed and the hyperspeed picking that is fast but sloppy.

that whole post was just good advice … but to comment on this part.

My classical teacher had us work on “bursts” which I still really like.

-So set the metronome for really slow and play your passage four or five times.
-Then leave the metronome where it is and play it *once* at double time. Dont move onto the burst until you’ve played it four or five times in a row at the slow tempo, no mistakes. Do not play the double twice.
-Even if the double time wasn’t clean, bump the metronome a couple clicks and repeat.
-Keep going even as the double time turns into a big mess, but never ever ever try to play the double time twice.

It’s a good way to get that suuuuuper slow muscle memory practice in and also practice what it feels like to really play fast.

[AllanAllen]

I’ve noticed Kenny Burrell do double time bursts exactly like that in live recordings. I wonder if he would do similar exercises.

[rpjazzguitar]

Warren Nunes was blazing fast, with a jack hammer-like attack and used alterate picking and pull-offs. He also used a unique pick, he'd heat the blank and curve it to fit the pad of his thumb. Then play with the gently rounded edge. He'd also sear the upper edge to create a more grippable surface.

Jimmy Bruno, also blazing fast, uses economy picking, afaik.

Metheny, plenty fast, uses a different technique, with more sliding around, afaik.

I don't claim to understand Gypsy Jazz picking, but I know it's different and I know it can be blazing and sound great.

So, no one technique allows playing fast while others don't. They don't all sound the same.

Some of it is preparation. When the greats are blazing, maybe they've practiced those lines, or close?

Some of it is knowing what you want to play.

My impression is that the bottle-necks are usually in the picking hand. If I were starting from scratch, I'd try to do it Jimmy Bruno's way.

And some of it is your nervous system.

[AllanAllen]

Jimmy Bruno does economy picking. He also says “don’t do what I do, I have shit technique” So, there’s that.

I do economy because it is mentally pleasing to strum down for two notes. I’m not even joking, it makes me feel like I know what I’m doing.

[Sam Sherry]

Two thoughts.

THOUGHT ONE:

Speed in improvisation takes being able to think clearly and with control.

Paraphrasing Jimmy blue note, to play fast you have to be able to think fast.

To get to thinking fast many people have to practice thinking fast, but that work doesn't necessarily have to happen with a guitar in your hands.
Wash dishes, think about a fast solo on whatever tune you're working on.
Walk around the block, think about a fast solo on whatever tune you're working on.
Dwell on it and you'll start hearing it naturally and internally. Hear it and you're more likely to start playing it.


THOUGHT TWO: For many of us it's not about learning to play fast, it's about learning to play fast for a while.
You can probably play two or three notes pretty fast right now. Biddlah biddlah biddlah biddlah.
Do that.
Then work on drawing it out.


But from the musical perspective the goal doesn't have to be to blaze through an entire chorus of 32nd-notes.
The goal is to have enough access to speed to let you use speed as part of your musical toolkit.
If you start by just trying to sprinkle a couple of speedy things into your playing you may find that you're already closer to that goal than you think.
Bearing in mind that there's always more work to do of course.

[BreckerFan]

I'll speak about picking rather than legato/hammer and pull off technique, since I pretty much pick every note.

From a mechanical perspective, there are two challenges to overcome, right hand speed and consistency, and string changes. Your top speed will be limited by how fast your right hand can pick notes on a single string and change between strings. There are a lot of different viable solutions to both problems: motion mechanics using various combinations of wrist and arm motions, and various types of alternate picking escape motion and/or sweeping. Experiment with all the varieties and find what works for you. Once you have the raw mechanics in place, synchronization is just a matter of running boring scale exercises for a while. If synchronization is a struggle, it's probably the case that one of the hands isn't as developed as it needs to be.

From an improvisational or language perspective, you have to remember that no one is truly improvising, in the sense of carefully selecting every note in the moment, at fast tempos. It's really about linking together pre-planned chunks on the fly. I've developed most of my ability to do this by practicing composed lines that are intentionally composed to maximize the mechanics that are comfortable to me. If you have a difficult phrase you want to play, don't just brute force it; if there's a difficult string change, try and rearrange fingerings to eliminate it. The more you practice deliberately playing lines in a way that works with the mechanics you're comfortable with, the easier it becomes to do on the fly.

[starjasmine]

Your top speed will be limited by how fast your right hand can pick notes on a single string and change between strings.

String changes are absolutely the bottleneck for me now. Alt picking notes on adjacent strings requires more movement than tremolo picking notes on a single string, and the increased distance that the pick must travel makes it more difficult to strike the other string precisely with the pick.

The other thing is that your hands won't progress in lockstep. I had hand synchronization down for "normal" fast tempos long ago. At first, I could play my challenge lick legato in the left hand at a speed that the right hand could not pick. Once I was able to raise the tempo of the right hand beyond a certain speed, I discovered that the left hand couldn't keep up, and I had to work on that motor reflex. So each hand challenges the other when learning to sync at increasingly faster tempos.

[Christian Miller]

String changes are absolutely the bottleneck for me now. Alt picking notes on adjacent strings requires more movement than tremolo picking notes on a single string, and the increased distance that the pick must travel makes it more difficult to strike the other string precisely with the pick.

I mean you could always do the Pat Metheny thing and just hammer on. Actually sounds really good.

There’s no law saying you have to pick every note.

One thing that’s good about USX picking it that I’ve never really had a big problem with string skipping. There are some significant drawbacks too, rushing and descending odd number of notes a string pattern, which I cover in my video.

Every technique requires a set of workarounds for shortcomings. Alternate picking involves a lot of that, and the solutions to those problems are diverse. USX players are not typically pure alternate players but you do find some alt pickers who have developed an alternate picking style from that starting point.

But yes - all those issues with outside picking and string skipping and stuff. The advantages with solid alternate picking are that it does seem easier to develop even articulation and a good pocket. It can make players subdivide in a very duple way though - and it becomes part of the style. The stereotype of the alternate jazzer is someone who plays very even eighth notes almost exclusively. I find those players tend to be more in the middle of the beat or deliciously behind it a little. Pocket players.

Whereas the stereotype of a USX rest stroke player (Benson pickers, GJ pickers etc) is someone who has great chops, plays a lot of ascending runs and descending pentatonics and may be perhaps a bit prone to rushing. If they have that under control they may still lead the beat a little - in a good way that creates excitement. Wes is a good example because he was in fact a USX rest stroke guy just without a pick - which is I reckon why Benson is able to switch to thumb so well. Same basic mechanic.

Judicious left hand slurring gets you out of a lot of tight spots though, and is desirable for jazz anyway. Wes is a good study for this :-)

As far as string crossing virtuosity goes bluegrass is interesting. It’s notable that the two basic approaches to cross picking are USX style (like Tony Rice) double down up, or pure alternate (like Molly Tuttle.)

Economy by the way is a funny one because some economy players have such great time and evenness yet it always seemed so hard to get it under control to me… it seems to me like the technique is relatively easy to get fast but to make it musical is hard because you are always off to the races. BreckerFan seems to have it dialled in…

I don’t know what string skipping is like.

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[Christian Miller]

I suppose the most important thing that I learned from Troy is that the way you set up your hand and consequently angle the pick has consequences downstream for your style of picking, quite aside from the pick grip the actual nature of the hand, wrist or finger movement.

He wasn’t the first to approach it from the physical side of course - Tuck Andress comes to mind. But Tuck was very interested in the quality of the movement itself.

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[starjasmine]

I'm not avoiding other approaches like legato (hammerons/pulloffs) or economy picking. I've done a lot of both and I really like the flowing, liquid sound that a lot of LH legato technique with economy picking produces. (I don't sweep-pick at all tho.) I'm just trying to improve my strict alt picking speed and accuracy, so that when I play legato/economy it is a choice rather than avoidance of something I can't do.

The whole idea of building lines according to how many notes are on each string really seems to suit prefab (metal, diatonic) lines better than true improv. Having to be conscious of whether your last stroke on a string is up or down so you can escape in a particular direction seems like a lot of work. (It isn't "automatic" for me yet, though I hear that it can get that way...)