How To Develop Economy Picking Speed On Guitar
Making your guitar picking technique as economical as possible is critical for speed that is fast, clean and effortless.
What does economy picking refer to exactly and how can you use it to play guitar with speed?
Economy picking means you use alternate picking while playing on a single string. Then, when you move to play a new string, you use a sweep picking motion (pick goes in the direction of the string you are moving to) to play it.
This keeps you from needing to lift the pick up and around the string to strike it, making your picking more efficient by minimizing motion.
Here are some effective ways to master economical picking technique and make your guitar speed flow with ease:
Isolate The Picking Hand Movement To Quickly Master It
Removing variables from any new concept you want to learn makes it easier to learn without becoming overwhelmed.
This applies for picking economically too.
This video shows you exactly how to pick using an economical and efficient approach:Isolate the picking hand technique of this by simply playing a basic 3-note chromatic pattern up and down each string. For example: Using frets 1-2-3 or 6-7-8, etc.
This makes it easier to focus on your picking hand without needing to worry about playing a complex fretboard pattern in the fretting hand as well.
Accent The First Note Of The String To Lock Everything Into Place
A major factor for fast and clean guitar speed is the ability to focus like a laser on the movements you are making.
How do you do this?
One great way is to focus intensely on a single note in a group of notes in order to hear any inconsistencies that occur while playing it.
Once you can do this for one note, you can do this for many.
Picking the first note of a string within any pattern helps you achieve this while using picking technique to lock both hands together in sync.
This video shows you how it works:Keep Your Hands In Sync For Smooth Speed By Triple Picking The Notes Of A Scale
Training yourself to keep both hands in perfect sync makes playing fast with economy picking feel easy.
A great way to train this is to pick the notes of a given scale three times each note rather than only once. This achieves the effect of slowing down your fretting hand to allow your picking hand to catch up.
After using this approach for a bit, playing scales using one note at a time feels incredibly easier than it did just minutes before.
Try this:
Triple pick the notes of the tab below using the economical technique in the first video on this page.
Your pick attack will look like this for the first 6 notes of the pattern:
1. Down-Up-Down
2. Up-Down-Up
3. Down-Up-Down (continue downstroke to play first note of next string)
4. (Down)-Up-Down
5. Up-Down-Up
6. Down-Up-Down (continue downstroke to play first note of next string)
Etc.
Note: It’s also okay to practice triple picking each note several times before trying the next note. This makes it a bit easier before playing all the way through the pattern using nonstop triple picking.
Make Patterns On Guitar Flow Seamlessly Starting With Combining Sweep Picking With Scales
The best way to truly improve your guitar technique for fast and expressive soloing is to integrate your skills together so you can use them interchangeably at will.
This makes your fast picking technique useful for playing not just cool shred ideas but guitar solos and licks that really get people hooked.
For example:
Most guitar players practice single line runs (like scales) totally separately from arpeggios. Instead, practice integrating them to improve your fretboard visualization, soloing fluidity and usable speed.
This video shows a great example of how this is done:Now that you’ve begun mastering excellent guitar picking technique, it’s time to learn about how to get killer fretting hand technique.
Check out this free legato guitar playing article to get started.