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alternate picking
I have more trouble than I can say with alternate picking. I can read tab just fine, but I absolutely have to look at the strings I’m picking, especially if there are to be skipped strings. But I can’t see the thinner strings; they blend in with my guitar’s finish. The wrapped strings are bigger/shinier and I can see them. Of course, I have to tilt the guitar or hunch over it so they aren’t all hidden behind one another. And I can’t seem to get any muscle memory to be able to gauge the distance to the next string, etc. It doesn’t help that the B string is a slightly different spacing than the others up at the bridge.
Anyone have any tips for practice? I could do more drills, but if I keep messing up I’m not improving. Thanks in advance!
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3 Replies
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I had a big long answer typed up for you, but then I thought to myself I have no experience in teaching that lends me authority to recommend what I prescribed. They were just drills that I thought of, And you mentioned that there was no point in doing drills if you’re doing them with mistakes.
We have to learn to trust our picking hand to go where it’s supposed to go, that can only come by doing. The more regularly we can do a thing, the more frequently we can do it without error.
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I have a suggestion. Slow down. Slow down if you need as slow as 30 bpm. Next relax: there is no greater thing you can do to boost your pic speed and accuracy than to relax. Relax goes for the physical as well as the mental. One last thing….play as softly as you can, barely graze the string, as you do this, think of economy of movement. Lemme know if any of those works for you.
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Thanks both of you. I kinda figured there weren’t any “shortcuts”, though shortcuts weren’t really what I was looking for. Just a more effective way to practice. Slow is good; I play slow anyway, so maybe even slower.
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