Introduction
Well, well, well, letīs start part II of my series about picking. I hope you found the first part interesting too. Much of the stuff I was talking about in that first part is true for many aspects of playing, whether youīre practicing picking, theory or whatever.
I've had my share of practicing 8-10 hours a day, drilling myself. That sure had some positive effects and I learned from it. But, like I said in Part I, it often may be more effective to do little exercises (as opposed to 400 bar-etudes) a few times a day, as long as you do them on a regular basis.
It is extremely important to be critical about what comes out of the guitar. Keep listening for noises, try to make each note sound good. If that means slowing down, do so and work up to speed again.
Last time, I left you with two exercises, the "Paul Gilbert picking lick" (which I said is an essential one and really can help you develop your alternate picking if you use it often and on a regular basis) and one example of a chromatic exercise.
Before we continue with those chromatic-style exercises, Iīd like to show you another one of my favorite chop-builders, a bit similar to the PG-exercise. This I call the "Gary Moore"-lick cuz he used to play this one a lot back in the 80īs when he was playing a lot of hard rock.
I remember a guitar solo he played where he played this lick at about light-speed... my jaw still kinda hurts cuz back then, it hit the floor really hard. Anyway, you can also hear it being used by Nuno Bettencourt in the intro of "Mutha (Donīt Wanna Go To School Today")... itīs a pretty popular one and a great exercise.
Here is how it goes:
You can continue this one up and down the neck in a diatonic context. Also, try to play it starting with an upstroke. By the way, check out the first measure... the notes are G-E-C-B. Right, those are notes from an Cmaj7-chord. The next one would be A-F-D-C (D min7) etc. So use that system to spread that exercise all over the fretboard. Itīs a fun exercise...
Practising "in bursts"
This is an approach I always liked to use. Instead of playing loooooong uninterrupted licks (I talked about that and the problems connected to it in my "Step By Step" article), take a lot of small segments and play them over and over. Try to speed them up. i.e. play three ascending notes on one string as fast as you can. Keep the tempo evenly. Youīll most likely to play those
REALLY fast.
Then play three more on the next, adjacent string. Same thing happens. Finally, make up a longer "burst", playing three on each string. Thereby, step by step, youīre building up something. Change between ascending and descending. Play each "burst" over and over to get your hands, eyes and brain used to it. After you did that, return to one of the longer examples (like the run pictured below as an example for economy picking)
This worked great for me, helped my speed and synchronisation a lot. Here are some examples of "bursts". I repeated each one over and over and finally merged them into long sequences, like the one pictured in the second staff...
Picking on several strings
Those chromatic exercises are another basic thing to practise. They might sound dull, but they sure help a lot and are easy to remember. You can do bunches of variations, like:
1-2-3-4
1-3-2-4
1-4-2-3 etc.
Also, you can descend (4-3-2-1 etc.). Try making up exercises with two notes per string, or three. All those variations make a difference, and youīll gain something from all of them.
Sometimes, on some days, I donīt have the time to practise a lot. Iīll try to get at least 30 minutes. In those 30 minutes, I do what I call my picking routine. That routine consists of the "warming up" (which is a combination of warming up the hands and getting the hands synchronized).
What I do is: I play variations on that "Gilbert-Lick". Next, I play some 3- and 4-note-per string chromatic exercises on all six strings up and down the neck. (Starting at the first fret, from low to high e, then back down in 2nd position, up till I reach the 12th fret, and back down again).
Then I do exercises like this one:
That is my daily routine, and it helps to maintain my technique. The thing is, if you donīt play a lot for a few days (weeks), especially if you donīt play any of those kinda exercises or licks, your technique will definitely suffer.
Itīs like a foreign language... you donīt use it, youīll start to lose it. Your hands will have a hard time synchronizing, your accuracy will be messed up. It will take one or more long practise-sessions to get back to your standard.
So try to make up a routine that you can do once a day. Itīs not about stretching the boundaries and developing further, itīs about maintaining what you have.
OK, after all the chromatic stuff, letīs switch and get into "diatonic mode"... here are some easy scale patterns / sequences that I use. Theyīre in the key of A major / E Mixolydian, and theyīre chopbuilders too...
Finally, there are two Steve Morse-style licks that are great to work on your alternate picking they consist of arpeggios that youīd tend to play with sweep-picking. But you do play them with alternate picking...
Note that in the second staff, the two exercises are pretty much the same. The difference is that I start with a downstroke the first time, and with an upstroke the second time.
You should try that with all your picking licks. There are many situations where it is good to start with an upstroke, and it gives you a larger vocabulary if you can start a lick with EITHER an upstroke OR a downstroke.
Inside / Outside / Economy Picking
This leads us directly to the concept of "inside and outside picking"
I have met a bunch of players who are able to use inside picking or outside picking, but most of them were not able to do BOTH at the same speed. What is "inside-outside-picking"?
Well, inside picking means that if you play on two consecutive strings, like i.e. on the G- and D-string, when switching strings, you play a downstroke on the G-String and then an upstroke on the D-string, so you kinda move between those two strings.
Outside picking would be an upstroke on the G-string and a downstroke on a D-string, so when switching strings, you kinda move around those strings, which requires some extra-movement.
Itīs great to be able to do both. Because if you can use those at an equal speed, you can decide for each lick you play how to pick it, thereby adjusting to each lick and minimizing the amount of movement you need.
Well, the PG lick I talked about last time uses "outside picking" (down on the B-string, up on the high E-String). Here is an exercise for "inside picking":
You can make up different combinations and of course try to come up with little etudes to work on this. Inside picking might feel a little weird / awkward in the beginning, but after you take your time to adjust to it, youīll soon get used to it and you can use it in situations where it makes sense, where you i.e. minimize right hand movement a bit, thereby raising your potential / resources to gain more speed.
As I mentioned before, try to play each picking-lick or exercise both ways, once starting with a downstroke, then starting with an upstroke.
Economy Picking
Economy picking is another approach to the whole picking issue. It is different from alternate picking, and also is something like the connection between alternate picking and sweep picking. I really recommend to work on your alternate picking and build that up before you start to work on economy- and sweep-picking.
I say that because: economy picking (e.p.) is a cool tool that will help you to gain speed and achieve a smoother sound, but I think that one should be able to switch between alternate picking and e.p.
The disadvantage of e.p. is that it is not as flexible as alternate picking. Unless you include hammer-ons / pull offs (which requires good timig of the right hand also), you need an odd amount of notes per string, while with good alternate picking, it almost does not matter how many notes per string you have... you just play straight upstroke-downstroke.
The idea of e.p. is to use consecutive picking motions when moving from one string to the other. Look at the example:
You see that we have d-u-d-d-u-d-d-u-d. This is e.p. Kinda similar to sweep-picking, as I said.
It is a bit "smoother", and definitely saves some right hand-motion. Works great with three note per string-scales. The trouble starts once you start to take away notes, like you decide to play only two notes on the D-string. Then our e.p-pattern kinda falls apart. Youīd need to include hammer ons / pull offs to compensate that.
That of course is a valid solution, but it requires good coordination of both hands, and certainly changes the sound of your run a bit. Therefore, as I said before, I recommend to work on your alternate picking before you attempt to get into e.p. Itīs a great tool, however, and a nice, smooth transition from alternate picking to sweeping.
So what? (Conclusion)
Well, those were some of the most important factors about picking. I didnīt give away as many exercises as I did back in the old articles for Guitar4u.
Mainly because
a) many of them are to be found at several other places, have been displayed many times and
b) because I recommend to use the approaches and techniques I used with exercises you come up with yourself, or stuff you transcribe from your favorite songs / solos.
Thatīs what I used to do, and it helped me to translate all the stuff I practised into actual music.
If you decide to e.g. work on picking on one string only, there are gazillions of licks you can come up with, and so you should. Try to come up with stuff you like and that you can use. Donīt practice stuff that you already know how to do, challenge yourself and give yourself some problems to work on.
Do it on a regular basis. That makes more sense than just doing it once a month for 18 hours straight. Even if you have only 15 minutes a day, use those to do a few exercises to at least maintain your abilities.
Take your time, try to stay motivated. Believe it or not, but for me sitting down as often as possible to practice little picking-licks, working on my technique, actually was a bunch of fun cuz I knew that every minute of practicing would make me a bit better, enable me to play the kinda stuff I wanted to play.
So challenge yourself. Be critical. Listen carefully to what comes out your amp and / or your guitar. If there is noise (more than there should be), slow down, find the problem, eliminate it and speed up again.
Relax your left hand. Most likely youīre using too much strength / pressure there. Use a metronome. This will help you to stay in time and speed up more naturally also.
Most of all, have fun, keep it interesting, keep pushing your boundaries and work as much as you can... make up a schedule, but donīt plan ahead too much, because it might stop you from actually starting at all. Take some breaks in between and keep up some variety to not bore yourself.
OK, I hope these tips plus the few exercises and explanations I gave away are more helpful than a billion licks that I could have shown you... I leave that to you. Donīt rush through all the stuff I explained, take slow steps. Start with picking on one string till you can do it, then try stuff on two of them, three etc.
However, I hope you found this to be interesting, and I hope it will help you to work on and improve your picking technique or maybe introduce you to new ideas and techniques ( economy picking, supportive fingering etc. )
Stay focussed, have fun, work hard...