I had a guitar student who had been playing guitar for several years but did not know about a very important technique called alternate picking. So I opened up his eyes to this great technique and in a matter of weeks he had made more progress with his picking ability than he had in all his previous years of playing! The idea is that to help improve speed and efficiency, we alternate between up strokes and down strokes, instead of using consecutive downstrokes.

The exercises in this lesson will ensure that you develop impressive alternate picking technique. After a few months of practicing these, you will feel as if your right hand is possessed! But be sure to practice these exercises slowly. You do not want to play these fast and sloppy. Only play them as fast as you can while maintaining clean, accurate technique. Use a metronome as often as possible, and play them with and without distortion. And if you have an acoustic, be sure to practice on that as well. Playing picking exercises on an acoustic forces you to become a cleaner player.

I think a lot of guitar players neglect using their pinky finger. My hope is that you learn to use it just as much as any other finger. If you are not used to playing with all 4 fingers, then your synchronization may be off with this exercise. Just stick with it, and soon you will be using all fingers in perfect harmony (well, I don't know about harmony...).

Here we see the wide range of notes that your four fingers will be playing. This exercise will help with your stretching ability a little also.

You may be wondering why I start this one out with an upstroke. Well, you just have to go with what works. For some reason starting it off that way just feels more natural to me. But don't let that influence you. Try both ways.