Make Speed Picking Smoother By Strengthening Your Upstrokes In 7/8

It’s common to have weaker upstrokes than downstrokes in your alternate picking attack. This makes it hard to pick fast smoothly and consistently.

Strengthen your upstrokes by focusing on them exclusively. Picking any open string or fretted note using only upstrokes is a great way to make them stronger. However, there are many more creative ways to do this using rhythm as a tool to help you.

Practice any open string, fretted note, lick or pattern by doing the following:

·         Pick using only upstrokes in 7-note groupings.

·         Accent the 1^st, 3^rd and 5^th notes using a heavier picking attack, like this:

You do not need to do this at a very fast speed. Find the speed that is challenging to play at without making mistakes, but not so much that you are constantly missing the notes.

After just 5 minutes of practicing this way, your picking attack feels much stronger and alternating picking feels much easier.

Use Slow Tremolo Picking To Speed Up Your Mental Processing

Use the same rhythmic concept from the previous point while tremolo picking.

Pick the string at a slow tremolo picking speed while consciously accenting notes in a 7-note pattern with a heavier pick stroke. This makes using alternate picking normally feel easier because you no longer have to think as closely about each individual pick stroke.

Challenge yourself to slowly increase your tremolo picking with this approach until you are picking fast AND accenting specific notes in patterns.

This really takes your tremolo picking technique to a new dimension!

Develop Better Accuracy While Speed Picking By Picking In Multiple Note Groupings

Building again on the previous point, challenge your picking now by doing the following:

Don’t just accent notes in 7-note groupings only, choose 3 different groupings and move between them one-after-the-other.

For example:

·         Begin by picking notes in 7.

·         Then pick notes in 4 (accent notes 1 and 3).

·         Then accent the notes in 6 (accenting notes 1 and 4).

Putting all of these together challenges your alternate picking in ways most guitarists would never think of. This gives you the opportunity to develop alternate picking speed that makes people wonder, “How is that possible?!”

Develop Faster Alternate Picking Speed That Can Be Used For Any Note On The Fretboard

A lot of guitar players neglect practicing their alternate picking speed in certain areas of the fretboard (because it is harder).

Ensure that your alternate picking speed stays consistent no matter what fret you are on by doing this:

Practice tremolo picking as fast as you can on lower frets using lower strings (such as fret 1 on the low E string), higher frets using higher strings (such as fret 24 on the high E string) and open strings.

Make Your Alternate Picking Technique More Consistent With Stamina Training

Wish you could speed pick continuously at a high speed without loosing control? Doing this requires practicing for consistency. Here is one way to do it:

1.   Choose any note and speed pick it for 10 seconds straight as fast as you can.

2.   Rest for 10 seconds.

3.   Repeat. Do this for one minute.

While practicing picking consistency in this manner, make sure to monitor how much tension is building up in your body. Focus on tension as much as possible by consciously relaxing when you feel yourself tensing up.

Learn how to stay relaxed while speed picking by reading this article on playing guitar while eliminating tension.

What To Do Now:

Use the exercises above for just a few minutes per day quickly to get faster, more effortless alternate picking that doesn’t waver or become out-of-control.

Now that you’ve learned new and creative ways to practice alternate picking speed, start playing faster in other areas of your technique. Become a badass shredder in no time using these free guitar speed resources.