Understanding the different guitar speed picking techniques and their uses gives you the expertise needed to become a shred guitar master! Many guitarists are familiar with these techniques, but do not know how to improve them to a very high level. Learning this puts your guitar playing a step above the rest.

Here are the guitar speed picking techniques that all shredders need to master and how to best use them in your playing for killer licks that turn heads:

Hit The Accelerator In Your Guitar Playing With Alternate Picking

Alternate picking is the most commonly used speed picking technique. As the name implies, this refers to alternating a downstroke with an upstroke for every note you play.

In most cases, guitarists’ downstrokes are much stronger than their upstrokes. This is generally due to the fact that downstrokes work together with gravity (making them easier).

Developing faster alternate picking speed means balancing out your picking attack by making your upstrokes stronger.

Here’s a quick tip for faster alternate picking speed:

Train yourself to do this by practicing any guitar lick for just 2 minutes using only upstrokes. Then immediately practice it using alternate picking.

See just how dramatic of an effect this practice approach has on your playing by recording yourself doing it once per day for one week. Over this period you will hear and feel yourself picking with faster, more consistent guitar speed than ever.

Play Breathtaking Arpeggio Licks Using Sweep Picking

Sweep picking means making a strum-like motion with the pick while moving across several strings to play them as smoothly and fast as possible. It is commonly used to play arpeggio patterns at speeds that would be impossible using alternate picking.

Sweep picking is also used to maintain efficient movement in one’s picking attack (more on this in the next section).