Alternate picking

Alternate Picking Technique

Okay, so let's start getting these hands working together. Now, we're going to talk about alternate picking.

If you've got the grade books, you'll have access to lots of scales. It doesn't really matter which one you pick, but these are all great exercises to help the synchronization between your hands. Additionally, it's something that you can use to develop your alternate picking technique as well.

C Major Scale Exercise

So, what we're going to use today is the C major scale. This will be in the technical exercises, as I said, and we're going to practice this alternate picking.

Here's how it works:

• Place your right hand on the bridge, as we discussed.
• Begin with a downstroke on the C note (the first note).
• Every note that follows it will be in the opposite pick direction to the previous one.

So, it will go:

• Down, up, down, up, down, up...

And that is alternate picking!

Let's Practice

Now, let's have a go at it nice and slowly:

1. Right hand on the bridge.
2. Count: 2, 3, 4.
3. Execute: Down, up, down, up, down, up...

You can try this with any of your scales. The C major scale is quite a good one because there are different numbers of notes on each string, which means it's a little bit of a challenge for your right hand to get used to.

Important Tips

What hopefully you've noticed is that my downstrokes and upstrokes don't involve different hand techniques. I'm not rotating my wrist with extreme rotations or anything like that. It's all just nice and relaxed.

• Downstroke: Down
• Upstroke: Up

You can practice this with lots of different scales, or you might even just pick a few notes on a couple of strings and practice it across a pair of strings.

Example Exercise

For example, maybe if we go to the third fret on the D string:

• Go 3, 5
• Then the same on the next string: 3, 5

Just repeat back and forth between those:

• Down, up, down, up.

Using a Metronome

This is something you can practice with a metronome. Gradually build up the speed, and just make sure that at all times you're feeling in control of what your right hand is doing.

Listening to Your Progress

I think it's important to mention, although it might sound silly, make sure you're listening to the quality of the sound that's coming out.

It's easy to concentrate so hard that you forget to listen to what's actually happening. If you find that happening, what can be really useful is:

1. Recording on your phone or laptop, just a bit of audio or video.
2. Listening to it back while you're not concentrating, and thinking:
   • "How did that sound?"
   • "What could I do to improve it?"
3. Then try it again.

This is a really good method to enhance your practice!