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Alternate Picking Technique

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

Introduction to 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. It's also something that you can use to develop your alternate picking technique as well.

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

Starting the Exercise

1. Placement: Place your right hand on the bridge as we discussed.
2. Beginning: Start with a down stroke on the C note, which is the first note.
3. Picking Direction: Every note that follows is going to be in the opposite picking direction to the previous one.

Picking Pattern

• Start with a down.
• Then an up.
• Followed by: down, up, down, up.

That is alternate picking.

Practice Together

Let's have a go at it. Nice and slowly.

Counting: 2, 3, 4.
Picking: Down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up.

Applying the Technique

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

Observations

What hopefully you've noticed is that my downstrokes and my upstrokes don't involve different hand techniques.

• I'm not rotating my wrist in extreme rotations or anything like that.
• It's all just nice and relaxed: downstroke, upstroke.
• Remember, the pattern is: down, up, down, up, down, up.

Further Practice

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

For example:

• Go to the third fret on the D string and play 3, 5, and then the same on the next string, 3, 5.
• 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

It's important to say, and it may sound silly, but 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, a really useful technique is to record on your phone or laptop.
• Capture a bit of audio or video, and then listen to it back while you're not having to concentrate.

Improvement

Ask yourself:

• "How did that sound?"
• "What could I do to improve it?"

Then, try it again.

It's a really good thing to do!