Alternate PIcking

[strathappy]

I was looking at this Paul Gilbert solo (which I think is incredible, BTW):



And it got me thinking, I really want to improve my alternate picking, anyone have any tips or exercises?? I'm actually not bad doing 3 notes per string, but 2 notes or 4 notes are hard because for some reason I mostly practiced 3 notes so I could do crazy stretch licks, ala Jake E Lee...also I'm not good at alternate picking while doing arpeggios, or doing different patterns or groupings of notes as in different scales.

[beckerologly]

Paul gilbert's own exercise, its amazingly useful and concentrates your ability in a small pattern, once you get this down very fast, cleanly and with CONTROL of the tone you're getting, you should be able to apply it to larger runs.

G string ----------------7------------------------------------------------
D string ------7-8-10-----10-8-(repeat)-----------------------------
he starts on an upstroke.. but whatever. Emphasize the string skip by maybe repeating the string skip a couple of times. Simple, huh?

Also:

up down down up
l l l l
E --------5--------------------------------------------------------
B ----------------8p6p5------------5h6h8----------------------
G -----------------------------7-----------------------------------

i love it when paul uses his G-string live....

[treguiers]

Hi Strathappy,

I've come across this difficulty in my practice sessions.
If you are playing a scale going from the low E to the high E using 3 notes per string, then your picking motion is down up down. The last down has you perfectly poised to sweep to the next string, where the process starts again. This also works going from the high E to the low E. if you pick up down up(again 3 notes per string) you are poised to use the last up to sweep to the next string.

The problem is, that it works because 3 is an odd number, and will work with any pattern as long as you use an odd number per string. Playing 2 or 4 notes per string can't facilitate the above patterns.

But I would advise to persevere with the pure alternate picking as you are more likely to come up with original patterns. Anything involving sweeping has a tendency to draw you into a predefined pattern.

For me, knowing how to do both is the best of both worlds.

BTW Frank Gambale covers this in some of his tutorials.