Squeeze it out
(29 Aug 03)
Sequencing a pattern
I wanna resurrect an exercise I talked about before, in one of my older articles. Let's say we take a 16 notes-figure, a run through a pattern which first ascends, then descends again, played with all alternate picking. Look:
Play this a few times in sync with your metronome. Now, let's variate this:
Do you see what the difference is? We started on the next note of the pattern (E). To keep the actual sequence intact, we have to add another note on the G-String, F#. So, basically, within that pattern, the sequence has been moved up one note. This changes our picking pattern slightly, since we now have only note left on the low E-string, and have 2 instead of 1 on the G-string.
Can ya guess the next variation?
Yup, let's start on the F#, 9th fret-A String. This time our pattern goes up to G, and back...
OK, let's add two variations next, since moving up the sequence one note within our pattern should not be a big problem anymore (after all, we did it twice already). Let's stop for a sec, move up to the next note (G, which means our top note in the sequence will be A), and start with an upstroke. The picking pattern actually would be the same as in our basic exercise, with two notes on the lowest string and one on the highest one, but now, that we start with an upstroke, it's different after all.
And, if we stick with starting with an upstroke, this is how we'd move on. Feel free to continue this and use it in different patterns, too...
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