Guitar Lessons: Alternate Picking

This post is going to be the first in a series of blog posts about my YouTube videos. As a teacher, I have found that some things are better explained in a visual form, and some are explained better when written down. Which is which is different for different people, and therefore I thought it would be useful to have a “written version” of some of my technique lessons on YouTube.

Of course, there’s also the fact that the content of my videos is totally unscripted (although I think I’ll probably change that in future)! Yes, all the guitar playing, talking and singing (!) you might have seen in my lesson videos is, believe it or not, improvised (and if you haven’t seen my videos, go here). I tend to start off with a subject, write down a few notes to get my ideas together and then just go from there (almost the same way I would structure an improvised guitar solo!).

So here is my first free lesson video for beginner guitarists, where I explain how to play the guitar alternate picking exercises from the technical exercises section of the site.

Have we got a video? No? Click here.

OK, so first I want to talk a bit about my hand position and posture (although, due to technical constraints of having to stay in front of a camera, my body posture isn’t perfect the whole time…). What you should notice, however, is the position of my fretting hand relative to the guitar (something that is correct in this video).

Hand Position

Most of the time I use, and recommend the use of, something referred to as “classical position”- where the thumb stays behind the neck and your fingers are parallel to the frets. Your thumb being behind the neck, it allows your other fingers to stretch out and fret the notes, and with your fingers parallel to the strings you have the best “angle of attack” for all four digits (as twisting the hand will either favour your first or fourth finger, but disadvantage the rest).

My wrist is relatively straight when I play the exercises, and the plan is to keep it that way. Your fingers are attached to various tendons running along your forearm which, of course, have to travel through your wrist. If your wrist is bent you’re putting excess pressure on these tendons (which can be a direct cause of tendinitis- Repetitive Strain Injury!). However, you still have to remember that the main muscles we are thinking about when doing this exercise are the ones in the hand itself. The movement should come from your hand, with only limited sympathetic movement from your arms.

Picking

The actual picking motion I use in the video is alternate up and down strokes (hence, “alternate picking”). If you’ve never tried this before you’ll probably find hitting the string on the way up much harder than going down (at first). It pays to practice the upstroke more when you’re first starting out. You might even try playing every other note (just the upstrokes) or play the whole thing using just upstrokes (until you are comfortable with them). Make sure you aim to get the up and down strokes of an even volume, although downstrokes will always sound slightly “stronger” than downstrokes.

Metronome

As I stressed in the post “Sowing the Seeds of Success“, you must play all of these exercises to a metronome and speed up slowly. You have to speed it up much slower than I do in the video (as that is just for demonstration purposes).

When you get bored of the original “pattern”, you should mix it up a bit (as I demonstrate in the video). So, instead of playing 1 2 3 4, try 1 3 2 4 to keep you from getting too used to one pattern. It’s essential that you don’t just “get used to” the pattern, because then the exercise is useless. Just like an athlete, try and vary the training a bit to stay on top of your game (otherwise your body gets too used to certain exercises and they are less effective).

For even more information on this lesson, along with the guitar tab, click here.

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January 25, 2010 at 6:02 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises | 2 comments

2 Responses to “Guitar Lessons: Alternate Picking”

1. Finger Independance | Chainsaw Guitar Tuition says:

   28/01/2010 at 2:31 pm

   [...] This exercise is very similar to the alternate picking exercise, in that it is alternate picked and kinda chromatic (although it doesn’t have to be). The big [...]
2. Guitar Lessons: Fingerpicking | Chainsaw Guitar Tuition says:

   22/02/2010 at 2:31 pm

   [...] Alternate Picking [...]

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