Alternate picking

Anyone offer any help with alternate picking? I’ve had a look through previous threads and Troy Grady seems to be ‘the man’ but maybe that’s too deep for me and it certainly isn’t cheap with a recurring subscription. 

Getting the Troy Grady membership for one month and going through the Pickslanting Primer should be enough to start with.

An easier ‘in’ might be to check out some of Ben Eller’s stuff on Youtube (he is a CtC believer) ;)

I’ve just looked and I’m sure it wasn’t $35 a month when I was on there.
It seems to have loads of interviews with players showing their technique now. When I was on it there was a few with people like Steve Morse and I didn’t find them particularly useful over the original lessons (Primer/Volcano/Cascade/Anti-Gravity).

It's worth checking out some Andy Wood Youtube tutorials. I also like the way his picking looks and sounds.

I subscribed to Troy Grady for a while. I think you can purchase specific packages.

I've got the Fundamental Changes book on alternate picking by Chris Brooks, which is great.

These things have improved my picking, but it's still only fit for purpose for the music I play, so I'm no expert. All of the above have got, what I would call, a 'God like' picking technique.

Check out Chris Brookes too, amzn
Picking technique

The Troy Grady stuff is amazing but....I think a lot of people miss his fundamental point, which is that there will be a movement that works for you and enables you to pick quickly, BUT you have to discover that through experimentation and just seeing what that movement is. You can't go "ooh, I like Eric Johnson, I'm going to become a downward pickslanter who uses economy picking when I have to leave strings on a downstroke" because that movement may not be the one that your anatomy or brain favours. Trouble is, he can do ALL of them as his demos show, making CtC members think they can do the same and that any of the picking approaches should be attainable for them. But he's a freak. None of the people he interviews/studies can use all the approaches, most of them only use one.

For what it's worth, the things that have led to any breakthroughs I've had on alternative picking have come from:

- reducing pick depth
- stopping separating legato lines and alt picked lines in my mind. I think about everything as being a legato lick first and foremost, and then all I'm doing is "painting" attack onto the notes with my right hand. Works for me, not saying it would work for anyone else
- don't practice slowly....instead shred in slow motion. When you're learning a line, you obviously do have to do that slowly. But make sure you are using the exacct same picking motion that you use when picking fast, just slowed down. No point playing slowly with lavish sweeping wrist movements...that will inevitable fall apart when you try and speed up

And by far the most important thing has been going for lessons with an arch shredder and learning all the other stuff you have to organise to enable you to play quickly - like being able to navigate the fretboard and visualise notes as quickly as you want to be able to play them. He's forever telling me "don't do that because you won't have time!"

What helped my alternate picking a lot was seeing which direction was the weakest and working on that for a while ...for me and most people it was the upstroke ..,.easy way is just set the metronome and reach the limit on downstroke only then see iff you can match it on upstroke. Iff you can't just work on upstroke until you can match the downstroke 

Another thing I think is your fretting hand needs to sound the notes anyways whether picked or not so a legato type of thing then introduce the pick 

A really good book I have found is Right hand development for Jazz guitar by Reinhardt hoover ...it's out of print now I think but did notice some free downloads somewhere on the internet ....it uses all picking variations

Thanks everyone for the advice, plenty to go on there - I did look up Chris Brooks not knowing he had a you pube channel (Doh who doesn’t these days) he makes it look effortless. At 63 yo I’m not ’that’  interested in speed picking but I am interested in being more fluid and confident. At present I feel like I lack good coordination and I see he does a book on that too. 

Also worth keeping in mind that whatever the picking style, a lot of picking problems are actually fretting and lack of coordination problems. lazy/ flat/ barred 1st finger is a big one for me. 

In my own experience I've found that to pick well across the neck in either direction (vert/ hor) my left hand needs to be as dexterous as my picking hand. so whenever I learn to pick something new, I find that focusing on coordination rather than picking hand mechanics is more fruitful. 

Well, I had to look up what "alternate picking" is; I thought it was just normal, but now I know.

prowla said:

Well, I had to look up what "alternate picking" is; I thought it was just normal, but now I know.

Ha, same! I read this the other day & assumed it some super-technical shred/jazz way of playing differently.

M1ck said:

Thanks everyone for the advice, plenty to go on there - I did look up Chris Brooks not knowing he had a you pube channel (Doh who doesn’t these days) he makes it look effortless. At 63 yo I’m not ’that’  interested in speed picking but I am interested in being more fluid and confident. At present I feel like I lack good coordination and I see he does a book on that too. 

If that's the case interval studies are your best friend.

Take a scale shape of your choice. If you can alternate pick 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, 6ths and 7ths ascending, descending, alternating ascending/descending and descending/ascending the control in your picking will vastly improve.

Not only that, it's good for the left/right hand coordination and the brain too!

Cheers Brad, just made a start on the Chris Brooks speed & coordination book and discovered my timing is very sloppy too, looks like I’ve got a bit to do, I’m only a noodler and mostly play on my own so it’s inevitable (I think) that I’ll find holes in what I already know and do. I’ll have a look at intervals as suggested and see how that goes

M1ck said:

Cheers Brad, just made a start on the Chris Brooks speed & coordination book and discovered my timing is very sloppy too, looks like I’ve got a bit to do, I’m only a noodler and mostly play on my own so it’s inevitable (I think) that I’ll find holes in what I already know and do. I’ll have a look at intervals as suggested and see how that goes

No probs. I’m certainly not going to dissuade you from checking out any particular books and my alternate picking speed leaves a lot to be desired. But that’s not my bag…

If your timing is sloppy, one thing I’d certainly recommend, regardless of what book or concepts you’re working on is to use a metronome. But you want to use it in a way that creates space for you to fall into. 

Cheers @Brad A metronome is what highlighted my timing ‘issue’ - I’ll plug away at it I guess the worse thing that can happen is I’ll get better! 

Some great advice in this thread already! I've been following Troy Grady since he first popped up decades ago and totally understand anyone who says "my brain's not big enough for this!" when they look at his stuff.

Grady's starting point is always "post a video of you doing your fastest (smooth/consistent) tremolo on one string", so yeah, do that.

Lewy said:
And by far the most important thing has been going for lessons with an arch shredder

Would you care to drop the name?

I was far too timid with fast picking, scared to do it wrong so for now my contribution to this thread for now will be to look at Ben Higgins' YT encouragement videos where he says we should just go for it. I eventually did so out of anger and frustration years before I heard Higgy telling us to, and I wish I'd done that earlier, but years before that I'd once screwed my right wrist up for months trying to be Bernd Steidl* in a day, so don't go *too* bonkers...

*My second-hand CD dealer of choice at the time sold me his debut CD with the words "here's some headcase brutalising a uke with a plectrum!" It was love at first mutola for me, pity Steidl's disappeared.

DLM said:

Lewy said:
And by far the most important thing has been going for lessons with an arch shredder

Would you care to drop the name?

Paul Clark aka Clarky

M1ck said:

Anyone offer any help with alternate picking? I’ve had a look through previous threads and Troy Grady seems to be ‘the man’ but maybe that’s too deep for me and it certainly isn’t cheap with a recurring subscription. 

I don’t know anyone with enough experience or knowledge to ask, those I do know will say ‘I just do it like this’ whether it’s right or wrong. 

I’ve seen a Fundamental Changes book by Chris Brooks and was wondering if anyone had used it or is there something better? And of course with a book it’s a one off purchase that I can dip in and out of without worrying about subscriptions. 

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated 

I'm pretty sure you can already alternate pick pretty, you're really asking how to play fast alternate picking.
Its really just about being able to play fast on one string first and in time. Get that tremolo picking action going to a metronome or drum loop and play at high bpm's and make sure you feel comfortable doing this at high speed. Don't think about moving on until you have this rigidly down, then move on to three notes on a single string, then move on to three notes per string across two strings going back and forth until you have that down. It you spend a few minutes a day doing this or however long you want to put into it, you will get to where you want to be quicker than you think.

A lot of players dismiss the above approach but its the only way without spending years on it. This is coming from a keyboardist, not a guitarist, guitar is my 2nd instrument. If I can do it (in 1 month) then you can do it no problem at all. 

M1ck said:

Thanks everyone for the advice, plenty to go on there - I did look up Chris Brooks not knowing he had a you pube channel (Doh who doesn’t these days) he makes it look effortless.....

I honestly think that one was intentional. Like "orifice" for "office".

Sauce: I'm a poofreader myself.

Chris Brooks book arrived today.  I’ll report back when I’ve had a chance to work thro it 

M1ck said:

Anyone offer any help with alternate picking? I’ve had a look through previous threads and Troy Grady seems to be ‘the man’ but maybe that’s too deep for me and it certainly isn’t cheap with a recurring subscription. 

I don’t know anyone with enough experience or knowledge to ask, those I do know will say ‘I just do it like this’ whether it’s right or wrong. 

I’ve seen a Fundamental Changes book by Chris Brooks and was wondering if anyone had used it or is there something better? And of course with a book it’s a one off purchase that I can dip in and out of without worrying about subscriptions. 

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated 

I think if you share exactly what you need help with we can probably help a fair bit between us...

Frank Gamble's Chop builder (I believe it may be re-released soon without the 80s cheese and scantily clad women)

Axe_meister said:

Frank Gamble's Chop builder (I believe it may be re-released soon without the 80s cheese and scantily clad women)

...but how will we know what the reward is for reaching the shred-goal?!!

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail because everyone has covered what I was going to say.
One thing I will add though:

You need to get organised in the picking hand. Most of the really good pickers have developed their lines, either knowingly or subconsciously, to have the string changes arrive on a certain pick stroke. 

Some favour changing strings after an up stroke, others after a down stroke. Some can do both. 

For most people I think becoming aware of which escape motion you favour, then developing lines as discussed will dramatically improve your success with alternate picking. 

An example from my own development:

For years I was baffled as to why I could blaze up the chromatic scale 4 notes per string, but when trying to descend it would feel stiff.
Well it turned out that on the way up I was changing strings after an up stroke (some call this downwards pick slanting), but on the way back I was ending up changing string on a down stroke, which requires a change on the angle of picking to be free from between the strings. 
I just simply can not do this cleanly. 
To fix this, I adjusted the pattern so that whatever happens I'm playing even numbers of notes on each string, to keep the picking the same when I change string. 

Hope this makes sense. 

There's lots more to all this. 

For example, don't feel bound to purely alternate picking. A sneaky little hammer or pull off makes all the difference! 

Thanks to everyone that took the time to reply - as usual The Fretboard has delivered some really useful advice. 

At the risk of some repetition...

I think pretty much everyone (even non-players!) can demonstrate the ability to tremolo pick a single string really quickly, e.g. the CtC 'knocking on a table' test. Remember: every knock is worth two notes.

So the main problem is changing strings...if you want to play faster/longer/cleaner, you need to have:

• naturally found a technique that works for you (I think this applies to many of the idiosyncratic "I don't even know I did that...I was busy making records!" legends)
• a strategy...this sounds complicated but you probably already have a natural slant on your picking hand so, it's working for you when you play an even number of notes per string: every second stroke you're above the plane of the strings and ready for a transition. You can always overcome stuff that doesn't quite line up by sneaking in a legato note or an economy pick stroke or brute force (swipe) or alter your slant (but that would be digging into more advanced areas)

Perhaps posting a genuine passage that you're struggling with would invite a bunch of replies with valid approaches.

ElevensLouder said:

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail because everyone has covered what I was going to say.
One thing I will add though:

You need to get organised in the picking hand. Most of the really good pickers have developed their lines, either knowingly or subconsciously, to have the string changes arrive on a certain pick stroke. 

.......

There's lots more to all this. 

For example, don't feel bound to purely alternate picking. A sneaky little hammer or pull off makes all the difference! 

Yes I think this is very overlooked - the fact that in a lot of cases the great alternate pickers have made musical choices based on physical preferences/predispositions. It's a slightly jarring concept at first.

And the odd sneaky hammer and pull goes a very long way - just ask Yngwie! 

What I've found personally is once I got alternate picking to a certain level, I then felt confident not to do it - in other words, play expressively and deploy some alternate picking if that's the effect or texture you want. See it as a sound, not a method of execution.

I would stop buying books everything is out there on the internet for free if you want it !
  Learn a song with basic alternative or hybrid picking something like Hello Mary Lou ( guitarist James Burton ) Solo
  this will help you to get your fingers working independently.
  Here is a link for you.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EaSDc99FfA  good luck.