In our last blog post, we looked at a cool picking exercise
that really works our pinky. Now let’s look at another 8-note repeating
pattern that uses alternate picking.
Here’s the lick:
In this one, the left had is not as difficult, but the picking
is much more challenging.
Again, I’m going to demonstrate this at 160 bpm. First I’ll play it slow
a couple times with pauses, then I’ll play it slow repeating, and then fast repeating.
See if you can play it faster and cleaner than I’m playing it here! Of course,
if you can’t that’s fine, just play it clean at whatever speed you
can, and go from there.
As with the last lesson, when I’m learning a new lick and I want to
play it as fast and as clean as possible, I often examine what
the right hand picking is doing first, and master that on its own.
We are using strict alternate picking starting with
a downstroke. If we don’t fret any of the notes and just
play open strings on the D and G strings, we get this:
JUST THE RIGHT HAND PICKING:
[audio:https://www.claudejohnson.com/blog/audio/april2011-ex3.mp3]
This IS difficult!
But if you can master the picking, adding the left hand shouldn’t be too bad. Have fun!
RIGHT AND LEFT HANDS TOGETHER:
[audio:https://www.claudejohnson.com/blog/audio/april2011-ex4c.mp3]
