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.

In my arpeggios guitar lessons, I generally use the sweep pcking technique to execute arpeggios. But lately, I find that alternate picking arpeggios is a much more articulate way to play them, and does wonders for hand coordination. Recall my previous monthly guitar exercise, titled Alternate Universe. In that exercise, I had you alternate pick your way through a arpeggio pattern sequenced in triplets - you were always alternate picking across 3 consecutive strings. This time we play the arpeggios straight through, which is actually more challenging because you are traversing 5 consecutive strings.

Most guitar players are very unaccustomed to this sort of technique, and strictly use the sweep technique to pick across consecutive strings. Sweep picking is not a very articulate way to play arpeggios. Guitar players have a tendency to sweep through arpeggios at ludicrous speeds, because the tecnhique lends itself to speed and is not difficult to execute, contrary to popular belief. In fact, if you are accsutomed to sweeping, I think you will especially appreciate this exercise, because alterate picking through arpeggios is far more challenging than sweeping!

Here we see the tab for this guitar exercise. Note that I indicate alternate picking for the entire duration. I recorded the audio clip at 190 BPM. That tempo is child's play with the sweep technique, but makes for a challening workout when played with alternate picking!