Guitar Technique

One of the most common questions I've been asked since I was 16 is about speed. "How the %$% do you that?" And there is an easy answer;PRACTICE. More specifically you should practice playing fast.

The best starting point is 3 note per string scales. You should learn all your keys. Major,melodic minor,harmonic minor,diminshed and whole tone. As you learn these, you can easily throw on a drum machine or metronome and make it a speed exercise.

I would alternate pick them in 16th notes and 16th note triplets. While your alternate picking is evolving you can work on legato as well. If you monitor the tempos and really push, I think you'll see some amazing progress in no time.

Now,when you can finally burn up and down these scales you may wonder how to make it musical. Well...that depends on your definition of what music is. Some great classical music is based on simple scale patterns. You can start there. You can take various numbers and work in groups of 2,3,4,5,6,etc. Ascending,descending and combined. Here's a quick example of what I mean using a group of 3.
Ascending-abc,bcd,cde,def,efg,etc
reversed -cba,dcb,edc,fed,gfe,etc
combined-abc,dcb,cde,fed,efg,etc

A good goal is 16th note triplets at 120bpm and 16th notes at 180bpm. Of course you can get much faster. Good luck!