Jack here, Jbf music and guitar lessons, in this quick guitar tricks, we’re looking
at hybrid picking; what it is, how to do it, and some of the things you can do with it.
The basic technique is to pick, with the pick, then with a finger, the middle is the most
common and what we’ll be focusing on, but your 3rd and 4th fingers are both fair game.
I can’t remember when I stumbled across this technique, or why I decide to learn it,
but I have a feeling it had something to do with Guthrie Govan; maybe a lick of his or
something- if you want some Guthrie Licks check out the card in the top right. But I
know this took me a while to get down, this exercise here is a really good starting point.
Down on the 7th fret with the plectrum, picking the 5th fret on the G with your finger. And
just toggle back and forth, as fast as possible but as slow as necessary .
Next try replacing that first pick stroke with an upstroke; this really took a while
before it felt somewhat natural to me! Cool, you can probably guess what’s next we’ll
combine alternate picking with the hybrid picking. Down on the D string, finger the
G, up stroke on the D string, finger the G string and repeat . Cool, now we’ve got
an idea on how to do it, where can we use this? Popping is a good application- for more
slap and pop guitar stuff check out this card. But yeah we could go:
Just gives a slightly different sound to using a pick all the time; really great in longer
more dynamic solos. Where I probably use this the most is for picking; one of the downsides
to being largely self-taught is that you can pick up odd habits. It still feels more natural
to me to pick in one direction as much as possible for arpeggios and broken chords.
Guns N Roses “it’s so Easy”, being a great example .
I could alternate pick this, but it feels less fluid; what makes playing this easier
again, for me, is adding in hybrid picking, like so .
This might not be the case for yourself, but with other broken chords, say like in that
3rd bar there some hybrid picking can make life
a bit easier! Bonus tip! You might notice the sound is little different when using the
finger; you could use you nail; or lazy man’s option just have a bit of compression on to
level everything out a bit more; it will sound more uniform.
Veering sharply away from the more traditional blues, folk or country uses; you could use
it to string skip; like I suggested in my Guthrie Govan Secret string skip system tutorial,
lesson card up there; .
The advantage is that your picking hand can more or less stay in one spot, which generally
makes things a bit more consistent. And it’s even worth considering if the strings are
right next to each other like in bar 2 We could even apply this to the Dave murray embellished
trill for more on that check out that card like I’ve got in this 3rd bar here John
5 and Buckethead have crafted really quite unique sounds form combining hybrid picking
with gain and often more contemporary riffing; like welcome to buckethead lands main riff;
again click that card there If you want to learn that.
That was a brief look at hybrid picking, this has been Quick guitar tricks, that’s the
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