About Alternate Picking
As a beginner you may be overwhelmed with all the things you need to learn. But don’t make the mistake of NOT learning this one first.
When you’re starting out learning guitar, you will get to a point where you’re good enough at chords and strumming that you might want to start learning about scales and playing solos. Learning scales and patterns will lead you to creating your first solos or figuring out other guitar players’ solos and understanding how the notes on the neck all connect together. As you approach this new threshold of knowledge, there are several tricks and shortcuts you can learn that will save you time and heartache further down the road.
This guitar lesson will discuss one of the most important tools to improving on guitar:
ALTERNATE PICKING
Starting with a downstroke:
This is the first thing you’ll need to master. (Aside from some types of crunchy rhythms that are all downstrokes with your pick) 95% of the time you will be doing alternate picking. This simply means when playing a series of notes on a string (or set of strings) you’ll always pick the first note with a downstroke and then you follow it with an upstroke. In the following example:
D = Downstroke with your pick
U = Upstroke with your pick
Ex #1 ---1---2---3---4---1---2---3---4---------------- ------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------ D U D U D U D U
At first this may seem to be a more difficult way of playing notes (and might feel a bit awkward), but, it’s something you should master before going on to the next section. Because if you don’t learn this now, it will be harder to learn further down the road.
Why Should I use Alternate Picking?
The more you play, the faster and more accurate you will become and you will need alternate picking to keep up with your progress. Since you have to bring your picking hand up for the next note, you might as well hit a note on the way up. This will increase your speed and accuracy 2X once mastered.
Hey! Stop reading this and practice your alternate picking now.