Originally, I thought I could keep up with my Exercise of the Week lesson, but I just don't have the time to be doing that on a weekly basis. So here is a toned down version - the Exercise of the Month. You can expect to see quite a wide variety of exercises here that will help you in many areas of your playing.

I believe that whenever possible, a guitarist should practice such a variety of exercises so that the fret and pick hand become accustomed to virtually any scenario that comes their way. Too often, I see guitarists relying on a small set of riffs and tricks, but they don't have the generalized skills to go beyond that. Let's consider scales. It is hard enough to convince players that the tremedous patience and dedication needed to develop scale proficiency is well worth the effort. But often, if a player does open themselves up to scales, they are still limiting themselves by sticking to so-called box patterns. This exercise, like many others on this site, is designed to empower you with the ability to navigate the fretboard with utter freedom. It is similar in spirit to my 3-Octave-Scales exercises. But instead of playing the scale in a straight-forward ascending or descending pattern, we are sequencing it. Specifically, we are playing it in consecutive triplets. Ascending a scale in triplet form has an inherent sense of power and drama. The consecutive triplets add tension and buildup by prolonging the inevitable climax (Yes - we are still talking about the exercise...). The use of scale patterns like this are used extensively in classicial music, especially by violinists.

This exercise is dual-purposed. Not only does it reinforce scales, but it is also a great alternate picking chops builder. When it comes to alternate picking, I find that players often fall into the same trap they do with scales - they limit themselves. For instance, my alternate picking exercises are meant to be used as building blocks. By themselves they are very limiting. But I think you will find that alternate picking this exercise will do wonders for left-right hand coordination and endurance.

Here we see a 3-octave G Major scale. This is the territory that your hands will be covering!

I find the best way to keep rhythm with this exercise is to consider 12 note groupings as shown in the tab. These groupings are symmetric, in the sense that each one consists of a 3-note-per-string portion of the scale on two adjacent strings.

As I said above, I think this exercise is a great alternate picking chops builder, so I suggest playing it as such. To get a nice crisp sound, I suggest palm muting the low strings. I did not play to a click track, but if you want to use a metronome, then I suggest setting it to a tempo that allows you to comfortably play the exercise as triplets. And as always, I suggest playing along to the MIDI file, and adjusting the MIDI tempo as you start progressing.

Til next month.

-brian