Alternate Picking Guitar Lesson

If you want to speed up your picking speed, there is no better way than to learn alternate picking.

Alternate picking is the key to increasing your speed, because it ensures accuracy. If you’re constantly deciding (or just letting your hand figure it out!) which direction to pick, you’re not going to hit your optimal speed – you have to remove this decision by making it in advance!

Alternate picking is sometimes referred to as “Down – Up” picking, because that’s basically what it is. Alternate picking is simple making sure that your hand is always going down up down up down up, regardless of the direction you’re actually moving on the fretboard.

Hand in hand (pun intended) with alternate picking is the function of your left hand -the hand on the fretboard. You need to have good technique there as well, or else any speed you attain with the alternate picking will somewhat useless.

What’s the best way to practice alternate picking? Repetition! And lots of it! 🙂 Trust us on this one, because if you don’t deal with bad picking habits now, a few years down the road you’ll be kicking yourself and have to relearn how to pick through your scales! Not so much fun… This is one of those guitar lessons that really pays off further down the road.

So use a metronome, or play along with a jam track…