Guitar Shred Lesson #3 - Economy Picking Lesson #1

Economy picking is essentially, well, you guessed it - a much more economical way of picking out notes on the guitar. Alternate picking works very well too, but sometimes it can slow down the picking hand in certain situations.

I prefer personally to use a combination of economy and alternate picking when a specific lick permits it.

Here's how economy picking works, and I'm going to explain this to you, because its very important to analyze what the picking hand is doing, whenever possible.

If you are doing something that involves 3 notes per string, and you are using alternate picking, the starting stroke on each string will alternate as well. For instance, lets say that you start with a down stroke on the low E string. It would look something like this:

E - D,U,D
A - U,D,U
D - D,U,D

This works pretty well, but it does require that when crossing strings, the picking hand has to essentially move to the other side of the string, in order to make a consistent alternating stroke. This wastes precious time if speed is your thing.

Economy picking is more efficient by far, and it looks like this:

E - D,U,D
A - D,U,D
D - D,U,D

Now economy picking is a little tricky at first - all fun things are! The best tip that I can give you when practicing economy picking, is to keep your picking tight. When you cross strings, keep the movement of the picking hand very limited. Think of it sort of as sweep picking, where you don't want to lift the pick up.

E - D,U,D - keep the hand on this last down stroke exactly where it is, and push it through the next down stroke.

Here's some examples to work with.

Economy Picking Ex. 1


Economy Picking Ex. 2


Economy Picking Ex. 3

Guitar Shred Lesson #2 - Sweep Picking Lesson #1

Sweep picking is by far one of the coolest sounding techniques available to a guitar player. A guitarist who wishes to develop guitar speed will probably find the most uses with this sort of technique.

However, sweep picking is no easy task. It is definitely one of the hardest techniques to master, and it can be VERY discouraging for those who are trying to get it down.

Many guitar players will ask themselves, "its so fluid when done by the masters, but how can I ever get my sweep picking up to this level?".

The answer, yeah, you guessed it - more practice, but I think that I can help you out.

I am a firm believer that a guitar player should not be working with any more than 3 exercises at a time. One reason is because if you keep jumping from exercise to exercise when training for guitar speed, then you will most certainly abandon an exercise, riff, or lick before you have maxed it out.

This approach to training that I am going to share with you works with any technique. It doesn't matter whether its legato, alternate picking, or sweep picking. Here's the game plan - you want 3 exercises. 2 for sure, and the third one is optional.

1. exercise one - a small exercise containing only a small amount of notes.
2. exercise two - a large exercise containing a larger amount of notes
3. exercise three - a nice sounding lead passage for your own enjoyment (optional)

Divide your time up in a percentile. Spend roughly 50% of your time working on the smaller exercise, 30% of your time on the larger exercise, and 20% of your time on the lead passage.

If you choose not to use the lead passage, then spend 60% of your time working with the smaller exercise, and 40% of your time working with the larger exercise.

Again, this can be applied to working with any technique, and I will give you examples of this in the future.

So let's start with our first sweep picking exercise, which will only involve 3 strings, the G,B, and high E strings.

If you know in your heart that when working with any type of guitar technique that you must start out slow, then starting slow with sweep picking is CRUCIAL.

You will have to play this stuff over, and over again, and you will have to start out at incredibly boring speeds I'm sorry to say. You'll probably end up working with the same speed for a couple of weeks, before you start to get the coordination down. I suggest that you start at 40 - 45 beats per minute.

Yes, that is very slow, but the early development of coordination is what makes this thing tick.

So here's the exercise.



The Right Hand

Sweep picking is a controlled strum, meaning that it is more of a rake. You must make sure that you are brushing through each string at the exact same tempo. That's why its important to start slowly develop this kind of tricky consistency.

I would suggest tilting the left side of the pick forward a little to get a good angle.

Keep your hand weightless, let the pick fall through the strings, as opposed to putting too much of your hand into it. Your hand should be dead weight.

The Left Hand

Remember, you don't want this to sound like a chord, so you are going to have to keep your fingers moving. Developing the coordination between the two hands with sweep picking is hard enough. If you are having trouble with this, then just practice with the right hand.

Muffle the string with the left hand, and practice the pick sweep.

Then try to add the left hand in as well.

Best of luck!

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.