Learn Guitar Picking

Posted on | | No Comments

You will find that all guitar teachers encourage you to make alternate picking the basis of your guitar practice. Once you know a few scales and chords you will be wanting to work on your picking speed and improvisation and alternate picking is the basic muscular habit you need to get your body into. But there is an alternative to alternate picking. The thing you should be aiming for in all your guitar playing efforts is economy of movement. If you are playing in a way that makes your muscles fatigued, this will lead to inaccurate and inarticulate playing. Working against your muscles will take all the fun out of playing the guitar and the creativity out of your composing efforts.

You can add economy picking to your daily guitar practice. This means you get from one note to the next using the line of least resistance. For example, instead of playing a note on the sixth string with a down stroke and the next note on the fifth string using an up stroke, you could use one down stroke to pick both notes. If you have been practicing your alternate picking you will probably find economy picking a little hard to get used to but after a day or two of practice you will start to see the possibilities.

Here is a video on the basic practice of economy picking: