Picking Technique
To play lead guitar well, you need to have good picking technique and be comfortable with many different rhythms and beat subdivisions. A good way to develop this ability is to practice scales (e.g., the minor pentatonic) in a variety of ways. To begin with, make sure you are comfortable playing up and down the scale in eighth notes using alternate picking as shown in the following example.
Now try picking each note twice. Start off at a slow tempo and once you can play all the notes smoothly and evenly, gradually increase the speed. It is essential to use a metronome with this type of practice so you don’t unconsciously speed up and slow down.
Playing a triplet on each note is a very good way to develop the alternate picking technique because each note starts with an opposite stroke to the last one. This means you should be equally comfortable playing any note with either a downstroke or an upstroke.
Don’t forget to practice your eighth notes with a swing feel. Remember that swing 8ths are equivalent to the first and third notes of a triplet.
It is also a good idea to practice scales with an eighth rest on every beat and an eighth note in between every beat, which creates a syncopated rhythm. When using rests, counting is particularly important so you don’t get lost and play notes in the wrong place.
Sixteenth Notes
This is a sixteenth note.
It lasts for one quarter of a beat.
There are four sixteenth notes in one beat.
There are 16 sixteenth notes in one bar of * time.
When counting 16th notes, notice the different sound for each part of the beat – one ee and ah, two ee and ah. etc (written 1 e + a, 2 e + a. etc).
Once you are comfortable counting sixteenth notes on one note, apply them to the minor pentatonic scale as shown here.
A common problem guitarists encounter with right hand technique is picking "in between" two strings. Playing a downstroke on a lower string followed by an upstroke on a higher string is easy enough but when you reverse the picking direction it becomes more difficult. Here is an example using open strings.
Once you are comfortable with the previous exercise, try the following 16th note patterns which make use of "inside" picking. Make sure you start with a downstroke and use strict alternate picking throughout. Once again, use a metronome and take them slowly at first.
