trill speed

hey whats up. so heres the deal my trills arent fast enough. i mean they're okay sounding but not at like pro speed yet. so how do i make it faster. or is just something that takes a lot of practice?

Welcome,
Well it is really good to do finger exercises, they can be found under lessons on this site, and they will get your fingers working properly, practice them a lot and you can play a lot cleaner and faster when you do it right

ye, im not very fast at all, i can play run to the hills solo by maiden tho, i just tabb it, tht is the one string trills.

stress ball! just squeez it all the time with ur left fingers, it'll strengthen them, and you need strong fingers to do trills for along time

yeah I have the same problem diong stuff like the first part of The Trooper any of Dave Murrays solo's or that first descending part of Peace Sells the guitar part of course, the only way I can trill fast enough is to either right hand tap or just do the hot water cold water hot water trick to kinda numb your fingers

Just play the thing you are playing, and when it comes to a trill, just trill it as well as you can, and it will be okay, eventually it will get faster.

try double tapping your trills like so:

         tap         tap

E:-15/12-15/12-15/12-15/12-

B:-------------------------

G:-------------------------

D:-------------------------

A:-------------------------

E:-------------------------

makes it sound like you're trilling a million miles an hour. i do it the beginning of the solo (around 2:40) in my song "coming attraction" at myspace.com/lanny124

Well, it takes a lot of practice... but you've got to remember that you can't just slam your fingers on the fretboard and start at a million miles per hour. Build it up, get a metronome and start slow. If you turn the speed up very gradually (starting at a comfortable speed and increasing it 5bpm each time an hour - and I'm not saying sit down for an hour of constant slow trilling, just estimate when it's time to move up).

It can be tedious but it will strengthn your muscles enough to handle the higher speeds as you get to them, and you will be more accurate with the timing so it'll probably sound a bit better anyway.

Dont forget that jumbo frets and low action helps a lot. I mean its nearly impossible to trill on my high action Strat. Distortion also helps. Finger strength is also important.

I agree with Doz. I have been practicing with a metronome for about a month now and I can tell a big difference. When I started I would play the G Major scale in the first position at 100 bpm. Then when I could play up and down the scale 5 times with no mistakes I would move up 10 bpm. After I got to 160 bpm I dropped it back down to 80 bpm and played the same scale but with 8th notes. I am up to 8th notes on 140 bpm now which isn't that fast but it's a lot better than I was. Also it seems like my pick accuracy and finger strength has improved as well.

This is were I got the exercise:

Scale Picking

and two others that I have been doing that have really helped me:

Finger Gym

The Spider

They really work if you stay with it and do them everyday.