Speeding up your fingers!

The only thing that will get you there is practice. Unfortunately there are no shortcuts. Start by getting your technique down at a slow speed. Whether it be sweep picking or playing straight notes, you definitely want to practice at a speed slow enough so that you can play each note cleanly, clearly and accurately. Use a metronome. Play your scales and exercises like this for an hour a day. When you've mastered playing each note perfectly, you can dial up the speed on the metronome one notch. Rinse and repeat. If you do this diligently, you will see drastic improvement in a matter of months.

Speed is just mechanics, note choice is the other half of the battle, but that is another discussion altogether. There are many different approaches to this speed issue, and the first one is to play slow and speed up. Here are two variations to that:

1.Start with small chunks of notes and learn to man-handle them with your left hand only. For instance, pick about six notes on two strings (see pic) and play them with just your left hand. Go 1-2-3-4-5-6-5-4-3-2-1. Keep playing it until you get smooth and you can hear each note with out picking it. Then start picking just once per string going up, and once going down. This is the basis for sweep picking-the left hand does all the work and the right hand just sweeps blindly over the strings. It's almost like cheating!

2.This is a lesson from Satriani back in 1989. Get a drum machine or computer generated track of some sort that will loop endlessly and press start. Now play random notes all over the neck along with the beat at a slow speed. I mean any note anywhere. Try chromatic scales up and down for example. Then try double speed of the drum machine. This exercise is good for mechanics.

hope this helps you kill some time. Oh and you can always sell your soul too! (Kidding)

You know those scales you know? And chords? Well play those (scales) up and down three notes per string ascending one interval at a time. Do that alot. Alternate pick it. Once you can play at high speeds, learn to economy pick them. As for those chords, arp. them in the most comfortable position for you. The fingering is up to you. Do what is most comfortable. And slowly drag your right hand down as you fret the board. SLOW. Really slow. Then work up speed.

Speed is a byproduct of accuracy. Asaph explained it correctly. Speed achieved on the guitar is like anything else in life that you can do quickly but aren't specifically trying to do quickly. You aren't even aware of your own "quickness." It's just that you've done whatever action that is so many times now that you've become so economical in your movements. People like Michael Angelo Batio are gunning for speed, which is different. It's a style they use when they play, like Paul Gilbert.

If you are still forming your skills and haven't done any solos yet, you need to get the basics down first, then go full-bore metal all the way. Incidentally, pick sweeps are a difficult maneuver even for intermediate guitarists.

I would recommend that you pick the easiest of the solos you want to learn first, (from your list that would be Santana or Kravitz), and learn one riff at a time as slowly as possible (who cares how slow you are, you're all alone, don't worry about it). Once you get riff #1 down, learn the riff that comes after it and chain them together fluidly.

If you reach a part you stumble on, resist the urge to play only those troublesome notes and instead play all the notes that lead up into them, sometimes this means going back a full measure or two before them (for the intro to Heart's Crazy On You sometimes that means the entire thing from the start!). Trust me, this helps even though you will feel impatient doing so. Play the entire solo then at a speed where you don't make any mistakes. Bump the speed up when you can do it well. If you have a piece of software like The Amazing Slow Downer, it will come in handy as you play along to the song. Patience and dedication here, don't force it. Eventually play it alongside the mp3 at normal speed and be amazed when you screw it up the easy parts all over again (and you will too). =)

Ultimately, you will play it with the band and things will be rocky at first because all the predictability of the audio track will be gone and you'll have to devote some attention to the other musicians, but you'll soon get used to it. Good luck!

Download Zack Wylde's Instructional Guitar DVD.