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The Art Of Picking Part 1
(18 Jul 02)
First exercises
Alrighty, in this first picking-article I am just gonna give away some basic exercises for your alternate picking. Please do those with a metronome. don't cheat, because youŽre cheating yourself !
The basics of practicing alternate picking are exercises on one string. Once you get those up to speed ACCURATELY, we can look at exercises incorporating more strings or string skipping etc.
Please understand that for every exercise IŽm gonna give away in this series, there are bunches of possible variations. Try those exercises backwards, incorporate stretches, start with an upstroke instead of a downstroke etc. Try those kinda variations, but ALWAYS pay attention to accuracy and rhythmic precision. Slow down if something doesnŽt sound right, try to find the problem, isolate it and eliminate it (check out my "Step By Step" article).
When practicing this stuff, donŽt overdo it. Take breaks in between, put away the guitar, take a rest. Then return to it. Those kinda exercises work best if you do them for a few minutes every time. And do them on a REGULAR basis. I noticed that often, it makes more sense to do this kinda stuff for a few minutes but EVERY DAY instead of doing it for 12 hours straight once every month.
Here are some basic exercises that helped me a lot when I started out. Start practicing them at slow setting, like 60 bpm. If you can play through each one three times in a row accurately, speed up the metronome a bit etc. You can also play different variations, change positions, change the order of notes, change the pulse etc.
OK, IŽll leave you for now. But before IŽll give you two more exercises (+ variations) for picking on more than one strings, which is our next step. Do those after you practiced the ones above for a while. These last exercises are essential ones and helped me quite a bit, cuz they focus on the difficult task of changing strings while picking, and you can also use them with supportive fingering.
The first one (+ its two variations) is the infamous Paul Gilbert-exercise. Do it till your hands fall off.
The second one (+ variation) is our basic chromatic exercise. you can do dozens of variations on that one. Try it with supportive fingering, also ! Move it up till you reach the 12th fret, then go back down.
Alrighty, see you next time, either in m second part about picking, or at the iBreatheMusic-forums.
And remember what Steve Vai used to say:
"5 good reasons not to practice: 1. There 2. Are 3. No 4. Good 5. Reasons"
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Eric started playing the guitar at age 10. He attended GIT and studied with Scott Henderson, Brett Garsed, Dan Gilbert amo. Eric is involved in several bands and recording projects and his instrumental debut - Hidden Creek - plus his instructional book Talking Hands - A Guide To Contemporary Lead Guitar Techniques is available HERE
Visit his website at www.ericvandenberg.net
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