Hey Friend,
So far, we’ve investigated downstroke picking and upstroke picking patterns.
While both are suited fairly well for certain rhythmic styles, they don’t do us as much good when you’re picking individual notes for a melodic riff such as a solo.
The problem with straight down-picking or up-picking is its relatively slow. Since you have to move in both directions anyway, might as well use that to your advantage, right?
Alternate Picking
The purpose of today’s exercise is to get your picking hand familiar with alternate picking. It wouldn’t surprise me if you’re already doing this, even if you’re not aware of it.
Open or download the exercise files here:
Alternate picking is very simple to understand. You just alternate equally between down-picking and up-picking on each successive note.
The motion is down, up, down, up, and so on.
Easy in theory, but you need to be conscious of what you’re doing, particularly when switching strings.
For example, if you happen to have a four note riff over two strings (three on one string and one on the second), the natural inclination is to play down, up, down on the first string and down on the second.
With strict alternate picking, you should play that fourth note with an up-pick.
A |—U—D—U—— (fifth string)
E |—D—U—D—— (sixth string)
As you practice alternate picking, the primary goal of the practice is the picking motion, not the quality of the played notes.
This brings to the forefront the importance of isolation in your practice. I don’t men locking yourself in a little room to be by yourself as you practice (unless that helps!).
What I mean is you focus your attention on one specific act - in this case the concentrated effort to ensure you are alternating your picking with the down, up, down, up motion, regardless of where the next note happens to be.
Will you always play like this? Alternating between down and up strokes?
No, but the purpose is to train your hands to do what your brain is telling them to do and building the muscle memory so it becomes a natural motion.
The exercise today is very straightforward, and I think it would benefit you to have more exercises that increase in speed and complexity to develop that muscle memory, but we’ll come back to that.
Right now, I’ll keep down the path of showing you the various picking patterns, then we’ll come back and work on developing picking techniques. Sound good?
Hump day, my Peeps! Let’s get through this on the slow train to the weekend...
Peace~
Dave
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