A short YouTube monologue by Lauren Bateman about guitar practice strategy: whether to practice for speed or for clarity. She contrasts slow practice (clarity) with fast practice (speed), uses a C→G chord-change example to illustrate tradeoffs, and advises practicing speed and clarity separately so they eventually converge into playing both fast and clean.
When you're practicing your guitar, are you practicing for speed? Are you practicing for clarity? Because they're two very different things. When we play and we practice for speed and we're going very fast, we have to sacrifice clarity. For example, if I'm working on a C to G chord change, if I go very slow, I can make sure that all of these chords and all of these notes sound wonderful. But if I never practice going fast, I. I won't get my hand to go faster. And the downside of when you go fast is this happens.
The chords all of a sudden might get muffled, or they might get muddled, or what you're playing might get a little bit sloppy, and that's okay. And I know for the perfectionist, that's a very hard thing to get over. But when you're practicing for speed, you have to push yourself out of your comfort zone, and that sometimes makes things sloppy, but that's okay. Because if you practice for speed and you practice for clarity separately, eventually they're going to meet in the middle, and you'll be play fast and clean at the same time.
