How Fast Should You Increase BPM When Practicing?

Short answer: raise the metronome by 5–10 BPM only after you can play the passage cleanly 4 to 10 times in a row at your current tempo. If you can't, you're not ready to move up — and forcing it just trains mistakes.

That single rule is what separates players who get faster from players who plateau. The number doesn't matter as much as the trigger: clean reps come first, speed comes second.

Why 5–10 BPM, not more

A jump of 5–10 BPM is small enough that your hands barely notice the change, so technique stays relaxed. Big jumps introduce tension — and tension is what actually caps your speed. Guitar teachers repeat this constantly: never start at your top speed, and never leap past clean execution to chase a number.

• Fast, difficult passages: move in 5 BPM steps.
• Easier passages or shorter fragments: 10 BPM is fine.
• If accuracy drops at the new tempo, step back down and bank more clean reps.

How often should you move up?

Not every session, and definitely not every minute. A realistic pace is a few BPM of durable progress per week on a hard passage — sometimes you'll jump 10 in a day, sometimes you'll hold the same tempo for three sessions while it consolidates. Both are normal.

Be sceptical of promises like "add 5 BPM every day and you'll gain 35 a week." Speed doesn't compound linearly, and treating it that way pushes you into tense, sloppy playing that undoes progress. Slow, clean, and repeatable beats fast and forced.

Log the number you actually earned

The tempo worth recording isn't your best single attempt — it's your clean max: the fastest BPM where the passage was actually clean and relaxed. That's the honest baseline you build from next session.

This is exactly what Crank. is built for. Add the fragment, set a target BPM, and log your clean max each session. The chart shows whether those 5-BPM steps are actually sticking — or whether you've been stuck at the same real tempo while your "record" crept up on tense reps that don't count. Free on the App Store for iPhone.