Guitar Shred Lesson #1 - Alternate Picking Lesson #1

Before we move into truly advanced guitar speed techniques, we must work on alternate picking. Keep in mind, even though most guitar players would preach that alternate picking is the way to speed. In some cases it is, but in other scenarios it is totally uneconomical. However, most of the time alternate picking works very well for playing intricate passages at fast rates of guitar speed.

Before working on this first exercise, it is very important that you pay attention to the picking hand. I would highly recommend that you take this guitar speed exercise, play it slowly, and count out the pick strokes as you pick each note on your guitar.

You need to have a great understanding of what the pick is doing. This will help you train better, because it will also help you identify nasty habits, which in turn will allow you to correct them.

The reason that I want you to pay attention to the pick strokes, is because depending on the amounts of notes that you have on each string, it will change how the pick reacts. That is to say that it will change the number of pick strokes, and how the pick crosses from string to string.

This exercise is a basic 3 note per string alternate picking lick, but in the next lesson, you will see how different numbers of notes reconstructs the picking formation.

Use a metronome.