Stop 2 of 5
Alternate picking
Down-up: economy, hand sync and clean speed.
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Stop 2 of 5
Down-up: economy, hand sync and clean speed.
In the last stop you put box 1 under the fingers of your fretting hand. Now it's the other hand's turn. When you play one note after another, the decides whether they sound even, in time and clean, or clumsy and lopsided. The technique almost every guitarist uses for single-note lines is : down, up, down, up. It takes a minute to explain and a lifetime to polish, so let's build it properly from the start.
Hold the pick the way you learned at base camp: between the pad of your thumb and the side of your index finger, with just a few millimetres of tip showing. Fret the third string at the 7th fret (D) and play eight notes in a row, alternating: the first one down (towards the floor), the second one up (towards the ceiling), and so on.
The grid above shows each direction on its count: downstrokes fall on the numbers ("1, 2, 3, 4") and upstrokes on the "&"s. It's exactly like eighth-note strumming, except that instead of crossing six strings the pick crosses just one. Now hear it with single notes:
The motion comes mainly from the wrist, with a gentle rotation, as if you were flicking a drop of water off your fingers. The forearm goes along but doesn't push. The pick goes into the string only slightly, just the tip, and comes out just on the other side: the shorter the trip, the sooner it's back.
Now play the same eight notes only with downstrokes. After each note the pick has to travel back up without touching the string so it can strike again. That return trip is an "empty" motion: it takes as long as an attack, but makes no sound.
With alternate picking, the return trip sounds too. That's why you can play twice as many notes with the same hand motion. Guitarists call this economy of motion: the most sound from the least movement.
Downstrokes only
Every note gets a strong, even attack, ideal for riffs at moderate tempos. But beyond a certain speed your hand can't keep up: half of every motion is wasted going back up.
Alternate picking
The hand moves like a regular pendulum and every motion makes a note. It's the basis for melodies, scales and fast solos. The challenge: making the upstrokes sound as solid as the downstrokes.
The downstroke gets help from gravity and the weight of your arm; the thumb also pushes with its strongest side. On the way up, the attack relies on the index finger and a wrist that's less used to that direction. So at first upstrokes tend to sound weaker, or a little late.
Listening is the cure. Play four notes on one string (down-up-down-up) and pay attention only to the upstrokes: are they as loud? Do they land exactly on the "&"? Record yourself if you can. The goal is that someone listening without watching can't tell which way the pick is moving.
A clean note needs both hands to arrive together: the finger of your must be pressing at the very instant the pick touches the string. If the pick arrives first, you get a click or the previous note. If the finger arrives late, the note is born choked. This is called hand synchronisation.
The best exercise to train it is to play every note twice. Your picking hand makes two strokes while the finger stays put, and every finger change lines up with a downstroke:
Then play every note just once. Now the finger changes on every note, sometimes with a downstroke and sometimes with an upstroke. It's harder than it looks:
On a single string alternate picking becomes almost automatic. The challenge comes when you change strings. Look at the pendulum illustration again: depending on the direction of the last note on one string and the first note on the next, the pick has to "hop" around the outside of a string or stay trapped between the two.
You play the lower string down and the higher string up. The pick attacks both strings from outside the pair. Many guitarists find it natural, because the hand "hugs" the two strings.
You play the higher string down and the lower string up. The pick is trapped between the two strings and has to hop over one of them to strike again. It feels more awkward at first, which is exactly why it's worth practising.
When you play one string, the other five are still there, ready to ring in sympathy or from a brush of the pick. With a clean sound you might not notice, but with distortion any loose string turns into a hum. Playing clean is as much about what you mute as what you sound.
Speed isn't chased: it's built. A technique played fast and sloppy gets automated sloppy. That's why good players use the speed ladder, a direct application of :
For this exercise use groups of four : four strokes per beat, down-up-down-up. The first stroke of each group is always a downstroke and lines up with the click.
Start with the two strokes per note exercise from the scene "Two hands, one clock". Then move on to one note per stroke. Keep the pick direction strict: down on the beat, up on the "&", even when you change strings. Every minute, pause and relax your shoulders.
Goal: Play the every-note-twice and the one-note-per-stroke exercises at 80 BPM in eighth notes, with even notes and no noise from other strings.
Alternate one minute of outside picking with one minute of inside picking. Notice which one is harder for you: give that one twice the time. Use the speed ladder: three clean repeats, +5 BPM.
Goal: Play the outside and inside picking exercises four times in a row each, at the same tempo, without the pick touching strings it shouldn't.
This original line runs through the low part of the box and climbs to the root on the fourth string. Practise it on its own, then over the backing, repeating it every two bars.
Goal: Loop the whole line over the blues in A for two choruses without losing the pick direction.
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