Guitar Picking Lesson

There are two main guitar picking strokes:

• Downstroke
  A pick strokes a string or strings only when moves downwards.

• Alternate Picking
  Here the pick strokes while moves downwards and also upwards. This stroke makes sense in fast passages, allowing to produce two notes per cycle.

In guitar picking motion mainly participates only the wrist. But you can also add your arm and forearm to it if it feels comfortable. The fingers that hold the pick must be unmoved. Using them will only limit your speed and accuracy in the future.

Simple Downstroke Technique

For now let's not to become too overwhelmed and focus just on simple downstroke technique that already allows to play really cool stuffs.

This lesson is supposed that you already know how to hold the guitar pick correctly, if you're new to guitar pick positioning, take time and read How to Hold the Pick article first, so things will flow right from the start.

It's important to play rhythmically accurate. You can use metronome or any drum track to synchronize your playing with.
If you do not have a metronome, click here to get free metronome software on your computer.

Or use online drum tracks below:

Online Drum Tracks

Track 1

* BPM stays for Beats Per Minute

Track 2

OK, now if you're ready, let's make some noise.

Exercise 1

Play the 6th string for 8 times and repeat the figure several times.

Watch that each note is equal by the volume and try to minimize your moves. The pick shouldn't go far away from the string after the hit. The less the distance, the more agile you'll be.

Exercise 2

Now it's time to add your fretting hand to the action.

In the video I doubled my speed.
But you don't have to right now, accelerate only when you manage to play accurately and with confidence in slower tempo.

Now let's hit a couple of strings simultaneously in order to get E power chord.
Play the open low E string and the A string at the 2nd fret.

In the beginning in this video I deliberately hit the strings very slowly in order to clearly illustrate the motion. In reality though it takes a fraction of a second to reach the 2nd string after hitting the 1st one, so the sound is heard solid (from the 4th second in the video).

Exercise 3

Now let's create some basic guitar riff.
Play simultaneously the low E string at the 3rd fret and the A string at the 5th fret 8 times, then switch to the E power chord that we just played before, and play it 8 times too, loop this progression. Here's the tab:

Watch the video example

Practicing over this riff, polish smooth transition between two chords, it should take minimum time and be in sync with the beat.

For more fun you can extend this riff by adding the following part to its end

so the whole riff will sound like this:

As you see we need to cross over to the A and the D string in order to play the second part, but still ringing open low E string of the last chord from the first part will make some noise. The easiest way to mute the low E string in this situation is to slightly touch it with your thumb as I did in the pic.

Moreover you can also prevent the noise caused by accidental picking through unused nearby strings by slightly touching them with any part of your available finger(s).

For an instance in the picture below I played the riff on the A and the D string, I muted the next G string with the light touch of the side of the pinky finger and the low E string with the touch of the middle finger.

Right now maybe, it seems that combining the picking and the fretting hand together is difficult, they are out of control and do not want to listen to you, relax and don't rush, pause for a while, switch to slower tempo and practice.

It'll only take some time to get your hands used to it, and later you won't even think how and where to pick, the hands will work on autopilot.

Go to Metal Guitar Riffs Lesson

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