Why You Can't Play Faster (And How to Fix It): The Neuroscience Behind the Speed Barrier

Your brain has a built-in speed limit. But you can bypass it.

Has it ever felt to you like there’s an unseen force resisting your attempts to play or pick faster?

As if there’s an invisible speed barrier that you just can’t get past, no matter how much you practice?

If you’ve ever struggled with playing faster, I think you’ll find the following discussion illuminating and, most importantly, helpful. It might be just what you need to finally break through to the next gear.

Before we dive in….exciting news! I've just released another "Chillgrass" album thanks to the amazing response to the first one. Check it out on Spotify, Apple, etc. After you listen, I’d love it if you let me know your top 3 favorites in the comments!

Now, back to breaking speed barriers…

Marching To The Beat

If you tracked how long your recurring activities take, you’d notice something interesting: the timing doesn’t change.

From buttoning your shirt to signing your name to walking across a parking lot to brushing your teeth, it’s about the same duration each and every time.

We all have our own preferred pace at which we like to do things. And it’s not something we consciously choose. It just happens.

This isn’t just speculation. There’s an entire science around the phenomenon of our Spontaneous Motor Tempo (SMT).

What’s your SMT? Your SMT is the tempo at which you naturally perform rhythmic activities like walking, clapping, or tapping your finger. Scientists have discovered that when you ask someone to perform these actions, they’ll consistently settle on a specific tempo. A tempo that's remarkably similar across different tasks.

We all have our unique SMT. I do. You do, too.

Interestingly, all of our SMT’s fall within a narrow range, which clusters just shy of 2 actions per second.

For most of us, once per second feels much too slow, and three times per second feels much too fast. In this way, as in so many other ways, we are far more alike than we are different. That’s what comes with being part of the same species.

But within that narrow range lie individual differences. While Jack’s SMT might be 1.8 Hz (1.8 taps per second), Jill’s might be 1.93.

So, yeah, we are all literally marching to the beat of our own drummer.

Why might this be? Why would each of us have a unique preferred tempo for rhythmic activities?

Lightening The Load

Behind every action lies a vast network of neural circuits that make it happen. To power those circuits, our brain draws from a pool of fixed resources. The amount of resources a task requires is its “cognitive load.”

And we experience cognitive load as mental effort. The higher the load, the more effortful a task feels.

Furthermore, just as your muscles have a maximum weight they can lift, your brain has a maximum cognitive load it can handle.

The load of a given task also impacts our performance. The lower the load, the easier it is to execute. Again, just like muscles.

Push beyond your limit and you risk spraining a synapse.

This brings us back to our earlier question: why does each person have a unique preferred tempo?

The answer lies in cognitive load. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that our SMT is the tempo at which the cognitive load of rhythmic tasks is lowest, including:

1. The further people move from their SMT, the worse their timing becomes (the higher the load, the harder the task).

2. Perceived effort increases the further people go from their SMT (mental effort is how we experience cognitive load).

3. Walking or running at one’s SMT is associated with a peak metabolic efficiency.

4. When people tap at their SMT while performing a secondary task, both tasks remain high-quality. Move away from SMT, and performance on both tasks declines.

Each of these findings provides independent support for the idea that SMT represents the point of lowest energy expenditure and cognitive load. They indicate that the SMT is the tempo where our performance of these tasks is automatic.

This last finding above is perhaps the strongest piece of evidence that the SMT represents the tempo of lowest cognitive load.

It demonstrates that the SMT is the tempo at which the rhythmic task can be performed automatically, without conscious control and with minimal cognitive load. We know a behavior is automatic when adding a second task doesn't hurt performance on either one.

We can liken this to the rhythmic swinging of a pendulum. Pull and release it, and it will sway back and forth at a specific tempo on its own. That tempo is its natural, or resonant frequency. It’s the frequency at which it naturally oscillates with minimal energy loss. Forcing it to swing faster or slower would require constant intervention (i.e., additional energy).

Your SMT works the same. Your brain is always trying to perform every task with the least amount energy, which is why it pulls your rhythmic activities back towards this resonant frequency like a gravitational force.

The further you stray from your SMT, the stronger the pull, the more neural resources required to resist it, and the higher the cognitive cost.

SMT for Musicians

Now I can hear some of you wondering: what about musicians?

Do musicians have spontaneous tempos at which they prefer to play music? You bet!

Given what we’ve learned, it’d be surprising if they didn’t!

Research confirms that when asked to play or sing unfamiliar melodies, both musicians and non-musicians display preferences for specific tempos that are personal, stable across contexts, and closely tied to their SMT.

Try this: sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” right now (go ahead!). You’ll naturally choose a particular tempo, one that’s likely a bit different from the one I’d choose, and neither of us would be right or wrong. The same would happen if I asked you to play it on an instrument.

Based on everything we’ve discussed, what do you think would happen if I asked you to play it faster or slower than your natural tempo?

You’d have to work harder, and your timing would suffer. Which is precisely what the research shows happens.

At your SMT, rhythm happens automatically. Step away from that tempo, and now you're fighting your own brain. The further you go, the harder your brain fights back.

Importantly, all of this has nothing whatsoever to do with your skills as a musician!

So if you’ve ever struggled with playing faster, cut yourself a big chunk of slack. Your brain - specifically your SMT - has been secretly working against you the whole time. Through no fault of your own.

That’s the good news. You can stop beating yourself up about those speed barriers.

The bad news is that this fundamental speed-limiting property of your brain is not going away. Which makes it seem like you may be doomed to stay slow forever.

But fear not!

Because there’s one crucial detail that changes everything, which is…

This only applies when you’re the one setting the beat.

Beating The Speed Limit

There’s a super important aspect of the SMT to keep in mind, which is that it’s the tempo that dominates when you are the one setting the tempo.

When you generate your own beat, your SMT acts like a magnet, constantly pulling you back to that natural frequency and resisting any attempts to deviate.

How might we neutralize that force?

By outsourcing the beat!

While they may feel closely related, playing music in sync with an internally generated beat requires a different set of cognitive skills and brain regions than playing in time with an externally generated one. With an internal beat, we must devote cognitive resources to generating the pulse while simultaneously fighting the pull of the SMT.

It’s like chasing your own tail. You’re both the conductor and the musician, simultaneously setting the beat and trying to follow it, creating a recursive feedback loop that only multiplies the cognitive burden.

A cognitive burden that vanishes when there’s an external beat.

When you play with a metronome, drum track, or other musicians, you offload that entire beat-keeping system. Now your job is simply to lock onto the external rhythm.

The practical difference between these two scenarios is dramatic.

Multiple studies (including here and here) indeed reveal that, when playing at tempos that deviate significantly from their SMT, musicians’ timing and accuracy improves significantly when playing with an external beat (a drum, metronome, or other musician) compared to playing solo. Non-musicians show the same effect, easily tapping along to faster tempos when given an external reference.

An external beat makes playing faster much easier, improves timing, and frees up cognitive resources that you can direct towards other aspects of music making.

Even better, it triggers neural adaptations that improve your fast-tempo abilities in ways that solo practice does not.

If you play music with others often, you’ve likely experienced the difference it makes for yourself. When playing with a seasoned rhythm guitarist, bass player, or percussionist, everything just feels easier.

In sum, when you play with an external beat, it reduces cognitive load and mental effort, allows for higher quality practice, and stimulates the adaptations that improve your skills at playing faster.

So, if you’ve struggled to play faster when playing solo, stop doing that! You’re needlessly swimming upstream, trying to do something that is 1) unnecessarily difficult, 2) ineffective at making you better, 3) the wrong skill entirely!

Henceforth, do not engage in speed practice without an external beat!

The Bottom Line

Here are the 4 key things to takeaway:

#1: We all have a Spontaneous Motor Tempo that represents our natural rhythmic preference at the point of lowest cognitive load.

#2: When playing solo without an external beat, play at the tempo that is comfortable for you. This is NOT the time to practice playing faster.

#3: If you are trying to learn to play faster, always do so with an external beat.

#4: Check out Volume 2 of the new “Chillgrass” album and let me know in the comments what your favorites are! (Spotify, Apple, YouTube)

I'd also love to hear your thoughts about the SMT concept. Does it resonate?

Have you felt as if there were a hidden force that kept you from playing faster?

Have you noticed the difference between solo and accompanied playing?

Let me know in the comments!