Hi guys, I am still hoping to build speed. I am definitely making progress but I can’t keep up trying to play with some fast bluegrass recordings. Kind of like trying to lift more weight than you can when working out. Should I continue to try to play with the faster songs or should I slow down and try to build technique and therefore speed? It’s coming but I am impatient! Please advise.
Working with fast recordings
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It is most important to slow things down and build solid foundations, just like you said. I’d recommend putting most of your time towards that method of deliberate practice. Still, there’s nothing wrong (IMO) with trying to play along with some stupid fast bluegrass song every once in a while. 
As long as you’re not putting too much time into doing that, I think it’s still a good thing to do, even if only for fun. And as you build up more solid technique with slow practice, the fast stuff has to get gradually easier.
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I’ll second what Michael wrote.
Speed comes from a combination of familiarity & relaxation., but it doesn’t hurt to test yourself for time to time.
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Nothing to add it’s all been said 
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Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
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Everything these folks said it true.
The most true thing said was “but I’m impatient!” That will slow you down more than anything else since impatience leads to frustration which leads to no fun which leads to quitting.
So play fast once in a while for fun, and play cleanly as often as you can.
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I found that although I was playing the right notes, I was not paying attention to hitting the note with the correct finger. That’s not a big deal at slow speeds, but it will prevent you from playing, for example, FMB at 200 BPM instead of 150. - or whatever speed you are stuck at.
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Working on being smooth is definitely the most important thing. The techniques need to be fully in your muscle memory before you try to go fast. Speed will come over time if you work on having solid technique and smooth playing👍
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@davidsonpaul78 Have you considered using a program to slow down the songs you are working on, then gradually increasing speed? I have Anytune Pro on my iPhone and it works great. There are many other programs to choose from. Also if you have tef files downloaded the tef viewer and tabledit are really great to work with.
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As the saying goes, you can’t steal second base while keeping your foot on first. However, you definitely don’t want to play so fast that you are sloppy. I like to do the two steps forward, and one step back technique. For example, let’s say that I am learning a brand new song at 120 BPM. I will play that song at 120 BPM over, and over until I get the song under my fingers. Then I will speed the song up to 150 BPM, and practice that a few times. Then I will go back to 120 BPM to make sure that I am not getting sloppy. I will keep doing the two steps forward, and one step back technique until I finally reach the speed that I want to play at. 
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This is a good watch…
I like the part that starts around 29 seconds…
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Referencing the Brainjo author, Josh Turknett, we should build songs into neural networks (his professional term for muscle memory) at slow speeds. Once they are built, it’s then easy to build speed—just tell your brain to run the network faster. On the other hand, if you build the network by practicing fast, you’ll create a network full of mistakes. And those mistakes will stick at any speed—your brain doesn’t really know the difference—it just knows what we’ve built into that network. Sorry for referencing Brainjo so often. I just find his thought process to be insightful.
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Hey Mr Brain can you please change gear I want to go faster
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