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
