The Essential Guide To Alternate Picking is the only guide that offers a structured and progressive way to develop your alternate picking technique for precise lead guitar playing together with a proven 31-day speed builder strategy that will help you increase your picking speed.
This book was purposefully written for the following type of person:
- You like the idea of developing your alternate picking technique in a structured way but have no idea how to start;
- You’ve been playing guitar for some time but don’t seem to be making the progress in your lead guitar playing at the rate that you were hoping for;
- You’re sick and tired of YouTube videos from bedroom shredders and information overload. They make it look and sound so easy to get amazing shred technique, but they never really explain the basics and assume you already know them.
That’s why this book starts out with the basics on the road to your alternate picking success. Here are some of the essentials that are addressed:
- Best way of holding your guitar pick
- Optimum picking movement
- General practice tips
- and more...
Also important is the method how to determine your current maximum picking speed. While alternate picking is one of the best techniques for playing extremely fast, speed is only the by-product of precision. We don’t focus our full attention on ‘playing as fast as possible’ but knowing your picking speed is an important yardstick so you can measure your progress. Just like a sprinter uses a stop-watch to track his performance.
We then get down to the nitty gritty of precisely how to develop your alternate picking technique, starting with the essential patterns on a single string before moving to patterns on two strings. Once you have mastered these, you’re highly likely to have a good arsenal of licks and ideas that you can already use in your next guitar solo.
Now it’s time to put the patterns into action so I give you several licks in the style of famous guitar players such as Yngwie Malmsteen, Paul Gilbert or Al DiMeola.
Next we look at a simple counting method from India, that guitarists like John McLaughlin or Shane Lane use to master odd quintuplet runs. In western music we’re usually focused on even-numbered units like 8th notes or 16th notes. Being able to count and execute odd-numbered note groupings is essential to becoming a serious guitarist.
The following hand synchronization exercises will really work your technique and the additional project will have you explore several creative ways to develop better self-expression.
Once your hands are in sync and you can easily play on one and two strings it’s time to play on all strings and across the neck. Using the popular 3-Note-Per-String Scales we look at several exercises including note groupings of four and intervals such as seconds, thirds, fourths, sixths as well as triplet figures. These are time-tested exercises that will get you ready for almost any musical situation.
We then look at further applications of alternate picking and focus our attention on neo-classical sounding pedal tone and double picking licks.
After you’ve gone through these Malmsteen and Vinnie More-style licks, you will see that pedal tone licks also work great in a blues and rock context and aren’t exclusively reserved for the Bach’ N’ Roll guitarists.You will also put your picking hand precision and your plectrum control to the test with chordal picking examples that demonstrate that alternate picking works just as well for beautiful, arpeggiated rhythm parts.
Finally we discuss the “31-Day Speed Builder” Strategy for increasing your picking speed. Without understanding this key ingredient, you might as well not bother doing anything else in this book. Fortunately, this ingredient is definitely within your reach.