There's a stupidly simple explanation for why your rock and metal rhythm playing might feel slow, or why you don't have the endurance to keep going for as long as you'd like. If a song is just too fast for you and your picking hand gets tired, or you can play fast enough but not for long enough, it might not be your technique at all.
It's warming up. I know that sounds really obvious. So rather than just tell you, I tested it: a riff played cold, then a 10-minute warm-up, then the same riff again. This applies to every genre, but metal in particular has quite a high physical barrier to entry, so that's where it shows up most.
The test: Battery, cold ▶ 0:32
I used the riff to Battery by Metallica, with the click at 194 BPM, double time. I'd had a quick go at the riff, but I wasn't really warmed up at all.
It was okay in parts. Maybe I could get away with it in a Metallica covers band. But there were a few moments where I was getting stuck in the strings, because my picking hand wasn't warmed up.
The 10-minute warm-up routine ▶ 2:46
The warm-up is very simple, and I don't use a metronome for it. I cycle through:
- Downpicking
- Gallops
- Downpicking and gallops together
- Alternate picking
- Repeat
I do that for 10 minutes, roughly 30 seconds on and 10 seconds off.
Honestly, it's a bit boring. A quarter of the way in my arm was already tired and getting pumped. But even while it was tiring, I could feel it moving better, and by the end it was clearly working.
Rest before you play ▶ 4:00
Once you're done, let it cool off for a bit, like a good steak. It took my arm maybe 10 minutes to feel like it had settled down.
That break doesn't have to be doing nothing. I just played some less intense stuff with more left hand involved, to keep my hand moving without working the picking arm hard.
The test again: Battery, warmed up ▶ 4:28
Same tempo, 194 BPM. It was better. I missed one gallop and something in my left hand, but that's not relevant to the right-hand rhythm.
The funny thing is it actually felt slow, because I'd got so used to running at things during the warm-up. It was definitely more consistent. No scraping across the strings, just a nice clear sound. And not only was it playing better, I felt like I could play for longer.
Then I pushed the click up to 210 BPM. A couple of mess-ups, but I think that's just me not being good enough to play it at 210 consistently, and that's not a warming up thing. I'd say I played it at 210 as well as I'd played it at 194 about 10 minutes earlier, if not slightly better.
It's very possible that what's holding you back when you try to play these songs is that you're simply not warmed up enough.
Do it every day ▶ 5:57
It does still feel a bit tense for me, and I don't practise this stuff as much as I should. Which makes a broader point: if you do this every day, you'll be a step further ahead each time, because your muscles get more and more used to playing fast.
Why not just warm up on the song? ▶ 6:19
You could bulldoze your way through and use the song itself as your warm-up. But you don't want to bake mistakes into how you play.
A simple warm-up like this is great physical practice, because you're not stopping every time you get the song wrong or make a left-hand mistake. You're just getting your right hand moving. Then, after a little break, you can focus on the song.
So before your next session on a fast riff, do 10 minutes of downpicking, gallops and alternate picking, rest for a few minutes, then play the song to a metronome and see how far it takes you.
