Guitar Lesson Two - Right hand Technique

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Guitar Lesson Two - Right Hand Technique

Right hand:

The basis of good right hand picking technique revolves around strict ALTERNATE PICKING. This means that you pick either down-up down-up or up-down up-down no matter what note or string you are playing.

What this offers is consistency. Once you have this consistency, other specialized meathods of picking can be very useful. But, without this consistency you will have a hard time utilizing more advanced technique.

Alternate picking on one string is a pretty easy thing to accomplish. Alternate picking while changing strings is another matter, altogether.

Maintaining strict alternate picking while changing strings is the single most neglected practice on the guitar. Most people tend to pretty much ignore the picking hand in favor of concentrating on what the left hand is doing. If you do that you are cutting off a good portion of what is possible with the guitar.

This exercise focuses on changing strings while alternate picking.

For the purpose of describing the exercise, I'm going to use the B-string and the E-string. Eventually you will want to work your picking hand on all the strings. What you will find is that as you reposition the hand to cover different combinations of strings you will be calling into play slightly different muscle groups. Therefore, it's important to work all positions.

Begin by playing a down stroke on the B-string followed by an up stroke on the E-string. This is one of four combinations that you must master.

The other three are:

up stroke on the B-string followed by a down stroke on the E-string

down stroke on the E-string followed by an up stroke on the B-string

up stroke on the E-string followed by a down stroke on the B-string

as you practice these combinations, accent (play a little harder) the first stroke of each group. This is important so that the ear doesn't get confused as to which note is first.

This lesson is divided into four parts:

Theory

Technique - Left hand

Technique - Right hand

Music

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