Hey Friend,
Since we’ve been discussing picking patterns, each exercise so far has sort of built upon the one before it. Downstroke picking moves in one direction, upstroke in the opposite direction.
Now with alternate picking, we “alternate” the picking direction on each note we play.
You could try to focus on being extremely disciplined to ensure you maintain that pattern, but in reality, when you’re playing music, you’re going to use these picking patterns at different times throughout the song.
However, it’s awesome practice to play exercises that force you to use only one picking pattern.
This approach isolates the motions so that your muscle memory is allowed to build.
If you’re not familiar with the term muscle memory, your muscles can be trained to perform movements over time. The more you do something, the better your muscles remember.
Think about any physical habit you have that you don’t even think about. How about walking?
Do you have to give a second’s thought on how to walk from point A to point B?
Never, right?
When you practice guitar and you play a riff over and over again, you are training the muscles in your hands to do these movements automatically.
Over time, you’ll only need to be aware that you want to play that pattern and your hands will perform it without any hesitation.
So before we move on to the next picking pattern, I put together an exercise that works your muscle memory.
Since you’re only playing open strings, this is designed primarily for your picking hand, but your ears and rhythmic timing will benefit, too.
Here are the exercise files:
The tempo is 50 BPM (beats per minute), and this should be slow enough for all of you to play. Play the exercise cleanly, making sure each note sounds good.
After you’ve done that though, I’d like you to take it upon yourself to then get out your metronome and set the tempo to 60 BPM. Play the exercise all the way through at that tempo.
Then do it again at 70 BPM. And so on, until you find the tempo that is too fast.
Congrats! You’ve found your base top speed. From here, you can work at building your skills to faster tempos.
That’s all I’ve got for today. Let’s all go out and have a great Friday - come on, 5 o’clock!
Peace~
Dave
| 
