Watch your picking hand next time you play something fast.
If you're like most of us (me included), you're not picking. You're starting a lawnmower. Big pull. Full arm. A little grunt at the end.
Then one riff later, your hand feels like it ran a marathon.
In jeans. Uphill.
Here's the thing... Speed doesn't come from moving harder. It comes from moving less.
(Dramatic pause)
Think about a basketball player bringing the ball up the court.
The good ones keep the dribble low.
Short bounce. Quick. Hard to steal.
Now picture a guy who dribbles the ball up to his chin.
Every bounce takes forever... A kid in light-up sneakers can swipe the ball with little effort...
That's your arm when you swing it on every note.
Every inch the pick travels out is an inch it has to come back. At slow speeds you don't notice. At fast speeds it's the whole problem.
So try a drill I learned, called: The Dribble.
It takes four minutes. You can finish it before your coffee gets cold.
Put your finger on the 5th fret of the G string.
One note.
That's it. Set your metronome to 40. Yes, 40. It's slow enough to fall asleep to. That's on purpose.
Pick that note with the smallest motion you can make.
Low dribble, not a full arm swing.
One note per click for two minutes. Keep your eyes on your picking hand the whole time. If your arm is swinging, you're too big.
After two minutes, make the motion even smaller.
Then go two more.
Here's how you know it's working. The pick should barely clear the string on both sides.
If you can see daylight between the pick and the string, shrink it.
Is it boring? Yep.
Watching-paint-dry boring. But boring is where speed gets built.
Try it today. Then hit reply and tell me what you noticed as you tightened your picking.
Now here's the sneaky part…
Your fretting hand does the chin-high dribble too.
Every time you hunt the neck for a note, that's one big, slow bounce.
And someone's always waiting to swipe the ball.
The FretGrid Method keeps that dribble low. Each session takes ten minutes. It ends with one small rep on the guitar.
Stack enough of those and the neck stops being a hunt.
Get The FretGrid Method here
Keep that dribble low. Your forearm will thank you tomorrow.
— Julio "Low Dribble" Rivera