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.

With this exercise, we are having you play the notes on the G and E string from the Mixolydian shape shown in the Diatonic Scales and Modes lesson. This exercise will get you started with string skipping before moving on to the more challenging ones (and they get challenging!).

Here we see the shape of the exercise. If you have been practicing your D Mixolydian 3-notes-per-string scale exercise, then you may be comfortable with this one.

In this exercise, the string we are skipping wants to cause us all sorts of problems. But just ignore it (or I should say skip it...). Treat this exercise just like 2nd alternate picking exercise. Except this time, you're covering more distance. Be sure to not let the pick scrape up against that b string.

This exercise is an extension of exercise one. This time we are not just sticking with the G and E string. We cover all strings with this one. And whereas in exercise 1, we were just skipping across one string, this exercise has you skipping across 2 strings, which can cause all sorts of havoc!

The fretboard diagram for this exercise is from the Mixolydian mode exercise. Do you think I rely on that shape too much? You don't have to answer...

Like I said above, there is more room for the skipped strings to wreak havoc on you in this exercise than with the previous one. So pay careful attention at the instances where you are skipping across 2 strings.

One of the general themes of my lessons is to teach you to be comfortable playing in key throughout the entire fretboard. This exercise was created with that in mind. It takes you from the highest frets all the way down to the low frets.

Another way to look at this exercise is that you are simply descending along a G Major scale on the D and B string. The fretboard diagram illustrates this viewpoint.

The toughest thing about playing this exercise is not the string skipping, but the coordination needed to pull off the rapid position shifting. A lot can go wrong when making the shift from the B string back to the D string. You'll have a blast with this one!

Once you have sweep picked enough arpeggios, and once you have heard enough sweep picked arpeggios, you tend to get tired of the sound of the pick raking against all those strings (well, I do anyway). Paul Gilbert is the one who opened up my eyes to playing arpeggios this way. In this example, I demonstrate how to play one of my personal favorite arpeggio types - the Dominant 7. There is just something addictive about the sound - don't you agree?

Here we see the extent of the notes along the fretboard. It is not as bad as it looks...

I prefer to play this exercise using legato. It just sounds so smooth that way. Playing it with alternate picking just sounds too aggressive to me. Sometimes, I don't even bother picking the lonely C note on the A string. I just hammer onto it. The toughest part is making your fingers do those 2 whole step stretches on the E string.

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!