Speed Picking - Alternate and Economy

Its typical for any guitar player to want to isolate techniques and work on each one separate from another. For instance, we tend to work on sweep picking, and then when we're finished doing that we'll move on to something like alternate picking. Here's the rub - most professional sounding guitar players will combine such techniques. There are two strong reasons for this. One, it makes playing the advanced stuff on the guitar easier, and two, it gives a guitar player more room for expression.

So in this lesson we're going to work with an outstanding exercise that I use to warm up with personally, that combines two techniques. What are they? alternate picking and economy picking, but with more focus on alternate picking.

One more thing before we get started - I truly believe in the power of limiting yourself to working with just two exercises per technique. One big and one small, and I'll show you exactly how we're going to do that. We're going to build a small exercise, and then gradually turn it into our larger exercise.

Watch the video, then consult the tab.