Super Picking

By Karl F.

Hi guitar-heads!

This is my first lesson here at the ShredAcademy! If you want to know more about me and my music go to this my webpage

And now let’s talk about the lesson of the day: picking. As you all know, picking is basically upstrokes and downstrokes with the pick, and this is not a secret. But the most important thing is clean picking, you have to be precise and to pick all the notes with a good coordination of movements between left and right hand.

Before starting, I recommend you play these exercises slow, even if they could seem easy to play, and to pick all the notes; then , when you have got the feel, you can start to increase speed and play fast without mistakes, and be sure that in a live gig a fast and precise picking is always the best!!

Enjoy!

Ex. 1

This lick, in the key of A minor, it’s very simple, because there’s always the same pattern on every string. Once you have the idea, it could be a good warm up exercise. Pay attention on the string change: the way I do it, is basically to go down to the next string with a little sweep, but you can do also the other way (in Gilbert style).

Ex. 2

This one is similar to the previous with some variation: very long picking lick (always in A minor). Once again, start slow and clean, and pay attention to the string change.

Ex. 3

Here’s the last one, always in A minor (or C major). It’s really simple, very easy to remember, but as I said before, be clean and precise while picking, and start slow!

This is all for now. I hope that these ideas will help you ,
Keep on practice,

Ciao!!
Karl F.