I had never heard of the phrase "string skipping" until I purchased an instructional video by Paul Gilbert. I was immediately hooked from that point on. I always get excited when I learn a completely new technique. The thing I enjoy the most about string skipping is the surprise factor that it causes. The wide interval(s) that string skipping introduces throws a listener for a loop and makes them realize that they have just heard something interesting. It is a pleasant surprise to the ear (for me anyway!). The exercises in this lesson will get you well on your way to skipping it up! Practice these with alternate picking as well as with legato.

As in the last exercise, this one has you using string skipping to play an arpeggio (and like the last exercise, this one was inspired by Paul Gilbert). This time around, we are playing an E Major arpeggio.

And here we see what this bad boy looks like. I would say that it isn't as bad as it looks, but yes - it is as bad as it looks! If you have long fingers then this won't be bad for you. For me though - I think I hear bones moving around in my hand when I play this one!

I will first say that this is about as tough as technical exercises get. I have seen just about everything out there and this really does rank up there. Maybe it is my small hands. I just find it somewhat painful pulling this one off. And with many other exercises, there is a lot that can go wrong. It requires extreme coordination to perform the string skipping and position shifting at the same time. Sometimes you might find that on the E string in particular, your fingers are just not going where they are supposed to. Don't worry about it. Just take it nice and slow and after a while your fingers will be doing the fretboard gymnastics needed to pull this one off!