Hello GMC!
One of the most important things for any musician is to incorporate new techniques to help us express our ideas in a better way and to expand our vocabulary.
On this occation i'd like to talk to you about hybrid picking. This is a really effective technique which isn't used very often but you might know about it beacause of guitar masters such as Brett Garsed, a true Ace of Hybrid picking and also many country guitar players like Steve Trovato and Danny Gatton amongst others. Still, the technique is extremely useful for any style.

Let's check out its benefits:

1- It's very useful for playing triads, arpeggios and wide interval scale patterns and string skipping as well.

2- Just by grouping different patterns on the right hand we'll get way more phrases by moving just a few notes on the left hand.

3- It sounds better than sweep picking since we hit the notes with our fingers and that adds way more rhythmic presicion. This also allows us to play cleaner sounds and obtain some killer tone since, for example, gives much more attack to legatos. Chords will sound much clearer too.

This lesson features a hybrid picking exercise I made in the key of E minor which repeats a right hand pattern on the 5th, 4th and 3rd strings and in the 4th, 3rd and 2nd strings (two groups of three strings). This should be practiced in all four groups of strings in order to use them in any melodic idea.

Practice it slowly.

In this exercise all notes should sound at the same volume and with the same feel. Pay close attention to the drums pattern as well.

Please don't forget this is not a musical idea but an exercise in order to incorporate this technique.
There will be more lessons where I use this technique combining different melodic ideas.

The chords that form this sequence:

Em9 – Am7 – Gmaj9 – F#m7b5 – Bm7 – Cmaj7 # 11

Feel free to ask any questions in case you have a doubt!

-- Juan

Am7:

Badd11:

Cmaj7#11:

Eadd2:

F#m7b5:

Gadd9: