Interesting. Since what you (eventually) need to coordinate is the normal alternating plucking motion, I wonder if it would be more effective to stick to that and work up a BPM ladder - each practice, start about 20 BPM below your last max, practice chugging 12-bar rounds to a drum tempo, and then increase by 5 BPM a round until you can no longer do it.
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Yeah that’s what I did initially, but my fingers fell apart much sooner that way. I can reach higher tempos by starting with 8th notes and gradually adding the 16ths.
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I’ve seen the most improvement in my speed when I spend 10-20 minutes a day playing 16ths with a metronome at the max BPM I can lock in with – but the important part for me is also fretting along with it. If you ignore the fret hand and just go for pure speed for the plucking hand, you’re not really building up the coordination needed to play fast, just making your plucking hand stronger (which is beneficial but you’ll still have tie in the fret hand eventually).
I don’t fret a new note every 16th, but that is my ultimate goal. Right now I usually go through scales staying on one note for 4 or 8 16ths. I’m at 100bpm right now and I can’t imagine ever needing to go much higher than that… unless you’re trying to shred Billy Sheehan style solos.
Yeah it’s boring but I still get a little rush when I can successfully move to a higher BPM. And I’ve found that I can then go back and easily keep up with “Higher & Higher” and even songs like “Time Bomb” which is very rewarding.
Also would recommend the Bass Hanon book for improving fret hand speed/dexterity. Most of the exercises aren’t exactly beginner-level but there’s 6 or 7 fingering exercises at the very beginning that have helped me a ton.
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