Hey everyone, this post follows on from an earlier one on alternate picking, so check that out before you get stuck into this. These are some more alternate picking exercises on a blues scale. They are written in B, but don’t contain any open strings, so you can move them up and down on the neck as you like. There’s no special reason for writing them out in a B blues scale, but it’s as good a place as any.
This one is the same as the exercise in the last post, only descending. I’ve worked out how to write pickstrokes in the program I was using, so there they are.

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This next one is an ascending six note pattern where the last note in the pattern is repeated as the first note of the next pattern.

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I’ll post up the descending version of this pattern soon, but it’s simple stuff so in the meantime see if you can work it out for yourself.
Remember the whole point of these exercises is to vary the patterns you use to practice your alternate picking, so that you’re not trapped in any of them. As always, use a metronome, start them slowly and speed up gradually. There’ll be some more variations coming soon.













