I had a student who took a couple of alternate picking exercises from a magazine, and worked at it until he got some impressive speed and accuracy. Which is awesome – practicing regularly is the only way to develop some real chops. But then when it came time to stop playing through the exercise and use what he’d learnt in the context of a song, or to improvise over some changes, the student will feel trapped to the particular patterns from the exercises they’ve practiced. Which is unfortunate.. exercises should never be a goal in and of themselves, they are just a great way to improve our technique. And technique should be there to give us freedom and choices in what we play, not to limit us to a few stock licks we repeat out of habit. So I came up with this exercise for him:
(Click here for a larger image)
It’s in a blues scale in B… there is no special reason for choosing the blues scale, except that the shape and sound of it would be very familiar to most guitarists, and yet most alternate picking exercises concentrate on diatonic and chromatic patterns – the student I originally wrote it had been practicing only harmonic minor shapes. So by writing this exercise in a blues scale, I’ve given you something a little different to work on.
To get the most out of this, start practicing it slowly with a metronome, and gradually build speed. The whole point of doing this is to free up your playing by varying the exercises you practice with, so don’t get stuck on it. After a few weeks, swap it for something else. I will be posting up some more alternate picking exercises I have taught with, so be sure to check back here. Have fun with it.