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Posted by: Ben Higgins Feb 1 2012, 10:52 AM

Task 2 : http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/ls/Inside-Outside-Picking/

Record and upload a version of this (at a tempo that feels comfortable to you) by Wednesday 8th Feb.

Following on from our basic picking hand work, I'd like to shine the spotlight towards picking between strings and picking over them. This is often referred to as picking 'inside' or 'outside' the strings. You will encounter these motions when you play alternate picking licks that cover more than one string so it is essential to understand them. It can be very difficult to attain any sort of speed when isolating these picking mechanics. Some people can reach very high speeds doing it (see John Petrucci) but those people are evil.

I use this as a way of introducing your hand to the motions and getting comfortable using them, rather than going for speed training. Once you've spent some time at this level, you would naturally encounter these motions in various picking patterns and the speed of the inside/outside picking would naturally increase along with the exercises you practice in time..

The 'backing track' is just a click track so feel free to record your takes with a metronome as the backing. Of course, I recommend starting only at a tempo you can manage and see if you can increas the tempo by perhaps 5 or 10bpm by next week. Enjoy !

Posted by: Praetorian Feb 5 2012, 12:43 AM

Grr! This is giving me more problems than I thought it would when I first saw the lesson! I SHALL PREVAIL!!!!!

Posted by: zoom Feb 5 2012, 08:04 AM

This is really a good practice lick. My first though was yeah ok I know this stuff and It's not supper hard at 100bpm but I got it up to 120 and I'm stuffing up alot and I find it hard to jump into it at that speed (A bit like jumping into a skipping rope hehe!).
Ben do you find you trip up on any of this at speed or have you got it down? Do you recommend pushing this up to bud light year speed and if so what's your theory on pushing to hard and mistakes. i.e I find with alot of lesson and stuff I'm always playing to fast and should probably slow down.

Posted by: Ben Higgins Feb 5 2012, 09:52 AM

I misread 'Grr' as 'Girl !' and thought ..'That must be some kind of exclamation of annoyance that I'm not familiar with !'

It just goes to show how these picking motions can easily be overlooked doesn't it ? Don't worry, it's more about getting used to them so you can make sure you can easily maintain an alternating pattern when mocing over the strings.



Hehe, yes as soon as it gets beyond 100bpm it's easy to miss things and mess up. That's why I built in the pauses to stop things getting too out of control with it. Some people are naturally good at these things but most of have to work at it

I don't necessarily think you need to push this one up to super duper speeds. As long as it's given you enough control and familiarity with the motions of picking inside and outside, you can approach other picking licks knowing that you're doing the crossing string motions correctly. Generally speaking, you won't constantly be playing something that goes back and forth between the strings.. the times when you cross strings will be shorter in duration so it will be easier to build up speed with a whole picking lick if you understand what I mean ?

Posted by: zoom Feb 6 2012, 04:12 AM

Ok my attempt at inside and outside picking!

Posted by: Ben Higgins Feb 6 2012, 11:10 AM

Great results here Zoom

Tricky isn't it ? I personally find inside picking a little bit more of a challenge because there's less space to move your pick and you could easily hit the wrong string or trip up over yourself. Although outside picking takes more energy, your pathway is clearer.

What about you ? Most people I speak to find outside picking more difficult.

Posted by: mad Feb 6 2012, 11:15 AM

I find inside-picking more difficult - now, I can do these patterns at 85bpm with inside. outside picking at 100bpm is no problem. But by wed I should be able to post a take (so that I can use all my fingers for the next task )...

Posted by: zoom Feb 6 2012, 11:50 AM

Yeah I think outside picking gets me more but been playing alot of stuff recently that's got me working on this like Gab's "Skate Punk" lesson and
Joe's "Alter bridge Style Lesson" and even Todd's chat's have been ripping my arm off.
I noticed at one point that I had been economy picking scales rather than alternate. That was avoiding outside picking

Posted by: Ben Higgins Feb 6 2012, 02:27 PM

Hehe, having the full amount of fingers does help a bit more

I look forward to your take !



Yes they do tend to do that !

Yeah, watch our those moments where you start doing economy picking accidentally. Economy picking's good, but it's best to do it intentionally rather than by accident

Posted by: Praetorian Feb 7 2012, 07:03 PM

The ironic thing about this is...I'm not having a problem with the picking...it's the fretting hand that I am struggling with!

Posted by: mad Feb 8 2012, 10:10 AM

Master, from the icy practice corner of your temple I come back with my take on your second assignment.
I played at 88bpm - the cleaner parts (2nd and 4th run) are outside picked

 InsideOutside_88bpm.mp3 ( 1.07MB ) : 129


Hey mate,

I had the same problem in the beginning, and even if I'm going >95bpm..
This is what helped me:
1 I started really slow (50bpm), where the fretting hand was no problem and it sounded clear
2 practiced at that speed until I was able to play it clean two times in a row
3 increased by 2bpm
4 goto 2

while practicing this lesson, I realised that a good 'stretchy' warmup before and inbetween really helped, because my fretting hand was getting 'knotted' quite fast..

hope that'll help you too..

Posted by: Ben Higgins Feb 8 2012, 11:26 AM

Thank you for your take Mad one

Outside picking is definitely the easier for you, as it is for me. However, if you were to continue working on these elements I would strongly recommend you to do them yet slower (boring I know) as the ratio of clean execution of the lick to not clean isn't high enough yet for you to really benefit from it. In short, at this speed you're practising as many mistakes as you are good habits. So, that's all I would suggest there

But it's all good !!



Ah, it is ironic ! Well it's good to hear that your picking is coping with it but it seems your fretting hand needs some attention to help it cope. What aspects is it struggling with ? Stretching or keeping in time ?

If you want to modify the finger positions so you're just playing 2 notes, not 3 different ones, then do so.. it's still practising the same picking motions but you're just using 2 fingers.

Posted by: mad Feb 8 2012, 01:29 PM

I'll do so Sensei, I'll post more decent take soon..

back to practice

[quote name='Ben Higgins' date='Feb 8 2012, 11:26 AM' post='568247']
Thank you for your take Mad one

Outside picking is definitely the easier for you, as it is for me. However, if you were to continue working on these elements I would strongly recommend you to do them yet slower (boring I know) as the ratio of clean execution of the lick to not clean isn't high enough yet for you to really benefit from it. In short, at this speed you're practising as many mistakes as you are good habits. So, that's all I would suggest there

But it's all good !!

Posted by: Olivier777 Feb 8 2012, 07:04 PM

Here is my take for Inside Outside picking. I am not very happy with my training on this one... Like others my main issue here was not my picking hand as I expected but my fretting hand !

As you will hear I am having trouble muting the high E and B strings when releasing my pinky sometimes, didn't figure out how to handle it. The stretch on the third lick is quite difficult as well so I am playing at 80bpm. I tryed to palm mute everything like Master Ben does to had some extra challenge but I need more work on this one...

Posted by: Ben Higgins Feb 9 2012, 11:07 AM

Hey Olivier, thanks for your take ! Believe it or not, you actually speed up part of the way through so you're actually making it harder for yourself. You can do it but first you need to get the timing more accurate so more time spent with it at a slower tempo is the answer here.

The other thing I noticed was your pick sometimes catches the wrong string, or it just trips up over itself. I hear this mostly in the inside picking, which is not surprising because inside picking allows less movements of the pick. This will also benefit from a slower tempo.

Your outside picking was definitely stronger but overall you will get more benefit out of it by spending some weeks getting timing accurate.

Posted by: Ben Higgins Feb 9 2012, 01:23 PM

Task 3 is go !

http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_forum/index.php?showtopic=42938

Posted by: MossRoller Mar 7 2012, 10:07 PM

As others have stated here, it initially seemed it would be easier then it was.
The first couple days were a little tough getting my fretting hand stretched out.
By the 5th day everything was feeling pretty good at 90 bpm. I initially had to start in the 70s.
I feel like I went backwards a little since then. I'm not very satisfied with today's take.
Also spent a lot of time trying to set up a proper recording which I didn't succeed at.
But it's the end of the week so to save a finger...
Hopefully the audio is good enough to hear properly.

Other than that, I'm loving these tasks and looking forward to the next one.
Unless you keep me at this one for another week.

Inside picking at 88 bpm. Outside picking at 90 bpm.

Posted by: Ben Higgins Mar 8 2012, 11:22 AM

Thanks for the take !

88 and 90bpm is a very respectable tempo for this type of lick. It's not easy at all.

On the picking side of things I'm very impressed. You've got good technique coming from the wrist. It was actually your fretting hand that struggled with the timing a little bit but this is all about the picking so let's not worry your fretting hand yet !

I wondered what sort of pick you're using ? It looked a little bendy.. or maybe I imagined it ?

Using a stiffer, thicker pick will help. I use a 1.14mm which is rigid enough for me. Some people prefer even thicker but that thickness is more than rigid enough for accurate picking.

Another thing that helped me immensely was holding the pick closer to the tip. I can see quite a bit of the pick sticking out. The more of it that touches the guitar, the more resistance there is. Also, holding it closer to the tip forces the wrist to have to move to change over strings which engages the right muscles and makes it harder to 'cheat'

It will feel weird to change the way you hold it at first but it only takes a couple of days really to get used to it. You don't have to make a dramatic change, just move your thumb and finger down a bit closer to the tip.

Posted by: mroberts70 Sep 20 2012, 04:52 AM

My wife prefers that I do outside picking as the inside picking annoys her because she doesn't like the noise I make.... sooo she makes me go outside.

Anyhow on a serious note (seriously no pun intended)...., I can tell that I'm that one guy who learned what he knows on his own then thought one day that I'd get some lessons to get better. So basically the bottom line is that I'm not learning anything yet, but mostly un-learning bad habits. Plus thanks alot Ben, with this lesson I learned that obviously I don't even know how to pick a guitar, much less play one. I'm only joking.... actually only joking about the attitude as this is a good basic lesson to know, but I am serious about the fact that I have to unlearn obvious old bad habits which I'm not really sure will just happen for me at this point.

Posted by: Ben Higgins Sep 20 2012, 01:18 PM

Nice one !!



Don't worry it won't take you long. This kind of thing is just there so people can identify with inside / outside picking and get a basic grasp of using it. You don't have to take it and become Paul Gilbert. Everyone has their own combination of using techniques to deliver their phrasing with. A combo of alternate, economy picking (like mini sweeps basically) and/or legato

Posted by: alexpabue Dec 7 2012, 08:06 AM

Hi Ben!!

Here is my lesson 2.

Is recorded at 90bpm. Has been more difficult to me the outside picking than the inside picking.

Posted by: Ben Higgins Dec 7 2012, 09:54 AM

Alex this is excellent. This is exactly what I like to see. Really relaxed picking hand with precise, even strokes. Your left hand movements are also perfect.

You say that outside picking is more difficult for you. A lot of people would say the same. It's because of the extra movement needed to move the pick from the furthest sides of the strings. It takes a little bit longer and more energy. However, by watching the video and listening to it, I would not guess that you had more trouble with this technique at all. They both sound really, really good !

Well done !