Speedpicking/alternate picking practice patterns

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So now that you have got the basics down - it's time to get speeding. The key to "mastering" speedpicking is to be completely comfortable with a few of patterns of your choice.

You will find that "pro guitarists" often don't have more than a couple of different speedpicking patterns - which they are so comfortable with that they can apply them to any scale in any direction on the guitar.

This should be your goal too. In this lesson I will give you the tools to get going.

     What you already need to know about speed picking

You have hopefully already studied Speed picking lesson 1. So before diving into this new material, make sure you are comfortable with (or understand) the following:

Strictly alternate picking

Small picking motion

Picking accents

Picking angle to the string

     'Pick a picking pattern' and start practicing...

Start with a pattern from the video, which you like the sound of most.

1. Without the metronome - play the pattern slowly a few times to memorise it - keep a constant eye on your picking hand to make sure the motion stays small and aleternate. Also, make sure you don't get lots of distortion noise.

2. Start the metronome with an extremely slow bpm - before even playing - count the notes out loudly. If you chose a sixteenth note pattern you should be counting...

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4

...while still counting, start playing. This will ensure your evenness.

3. Spend some serious practicing time on tempos you are comfortble with - let speed come naturally through hours and hours of practice. If you stick to this rule - you will not only get a speedy technique - you will also sound good. Even with speedpicking - good tone has to be your goal.

Pushing yourself too quickly to higher speeds will give you poor tone and an uncontrolled technique. In fact - the only way to achieve speed - is to practice slowly - many guitarist fail on speedpicking because they miss this simple fact.

     Fruits of serious practicing

Follow these advices and practice the video seriously. The upcoming speedpicking lessons will show you how to create all sorts of speedpicking runs...!

Good luck!

Related lessons:
Speed/alternate picking basics (pt1)
Speed/alternate picking vertical (pt3)
"Map My Gap" speedpicking solo

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