Hey, how you doing?
Justin back with you for a look at Alternate Picking for beginners.
Now, I'm gonna talk a little bit about the kind of the mechanics here.
The general idea, though, for your practice this week
is just gonna be having a go at doing some alternate picking.
There's not a lot more purpose than that at this point.
We're gonna be using it straightaway
when we get into the next grade of Beginners Course material.
The picking individual strings and alternate picking
is gonna become a bit more of a deal.
So, I just want you to kind get aware of it
and have a little bit of a go at alternate picking.
Alternate picking meaning playing down and up picks on individual strings.
Okay? So, using the down motion and the up motion.
So, let's do most of this in a close-up.
So, when we're picking individual strings,
the angle of the pick and the way that it moves around the strings
becomes a lot more important than it is for strumming.
And this is what I want you to have a little experiment with this week.
So, we've already talked about the angle of the pick.
If the pick is too flat onto the string, it kind of jerks over,
particularly if you try and play one string like that.
It just catches all the time. It's really, really cumbersome.
A little angle of the pick there,
straightaway will help the pick glide over the strings.
So, that's the first thing I want you to try,
is just go from a flat pick, where it's exactly square on the strings.
And then I want you to angle the pick against the string,
and notice that the way the pick just glides over the string a lot easier.
You'll probably find, you can move it a lot faster and a lot easier in an angle.
If I go back to it being flat, you can see straightaway...
it kind of catches on things, so you really want that little bit of angle there.
It doesn't to be like this, right? That's silly, but you know,
just 20 degrees or something like that is enough to get a nice feeling there.
Note that I'm kind of revealing a bit more pick than I might usually do.
Usually the pick will be a lot further snuggled into my thumb,
but just so that you can see the pick clearly,
I'm kind of holding it back a little bit.
You wouldn't normally want that much pick showing.
Now, the other part of this movement that I think is worth learning,
even at this very early beginner stage,
is that if you go down and up like this, kind of directly parallel to the strings,
it can make string crossing a lot more difficult later on.
So, I'd recommend that as well as the pick being in an angle,
you're also going in with the down pick, and out.
And when I say "in", I mean in toward the guitar
and then out, away from the strings.
So, not exactly, it's kind of more like maybe a 45 degree angle.
But, if you get into this habit of it going in and out,
that...
it's kind of complicated to explain to you guys right now
why that's so useful and so important, but if you're gonna practice picking,
rather than just practicing it with the angle like that,
so you can see now the playing is going this way.
I want you to think about it being in and out.
The pick is still at an angle.
So, the exercise for you this week,
is literally having a go at alternate picking.
That's all I want you to do. It's nothing more complicated than that.
There's no riff, there's no design,
there's no particular amount of picks on each string or anything like that.
I just want you to have a go at alternate picking.
Try and get the feeling of the angle of the pick.
Do try picking it flat, feeling how it kind of catches on the string.
Then angle it, and if you can,
try and get used to this in and out motion, as well.
And just try it on the different strings.
See what you can do.
Now, picking is a really interesting thing, cos lots of people pick different ways,
and I mean like the best of the best players.
There's not really one way.
The thing I'm trying to show you,
I guess the proper term is called "Downward Pickslanting".
I think it's a phrase coined by a guy called Troy Grady,
who runs a website called "Cracking The Code",
which is like a whole website dedicated to guitar picking.
It's quite incredible and definitely worth a look
if you've a bit of spare time between practice sessions to go and have a look.
It teaches you how to play like really super fast things.
Not something that beginner guitar players should be concerned with.
But this approach of having the pick at an angle,
and this in and out motion with the pick, I think is a really great thing.
Probably the best generally accepted way of picking well and picking fast.
Even if you don't wanna be a fast guitar player,
I think it's the best approach.
There are others that might not be bad,
and that's kind of again a part of what I want you to figure out a little bit,
like what feels comfortable for you.
Does it help if you anchor your little finger?
If the little finger's touching on the guitar,
do you feel like it's more of an up and down thing with the wrist?
Or do you feel like it's a little bit more turny?
Because, none of the approaches are wrong at this point.
I just want you to have a little bit of an experiment
with this alternate picking on one string.