3 Easy Steps to Improve Your Guitar Picking Technique
The picking hand seems to be the greatest limiting factor for most modern-day guitar players. It appears once a style of picking becomes habitual, it is very difficult to change and frequently total retraining is required. This one fact holds a lot of people back from playing guitar accurately.
But what if there was a way to improve your picking technique in less time than you thought possible? Here’s the good news: there are lots of ways to develop picking accuracy.
Here are just three:
1. Tremolo Practice.
This involves alternate picking which is simply picking: down, up, down, up etc. The trick is to practice very s-l-o-w-l-y so you can develop a feel for the string; use a medium to heavy pick. This is a great way to practice your tremolo picking is while you are watching TV.
2. Mirror Practice.
Practice you guitar in front of a mirror with the mirror focused on your picking hand. Look only at the mirror; not your picking hand. Start by selecting a number between one and six; next look at your picking hand in the mirror and try to play the string you wanted to play. Practice slowly. We want to get a clear picture of where our strings are in our mind’s eye. Remember that speed is a by-product of accuracy.
3. Target Practice.
This is a variation of mirror practice; once you can do this exercise accurately you won’t have any trouble finding your strings without looking. Look straight ahead — not at the strings.Pick a number from one to six.
Try to find that string without looking at the guitar. Remember that string 1 is the string nearest the floor and string 6 is the string at the top. In the beginning you probably won’t be able to recognize the sound that each string produces so it’s a good idea to check your work by going through each string one by one to see which string you did actually play. You do this by placing a finger of your picking hand on each string until you find the string that is vibrating.
If you intended to play the third string but you accidentally played the fifth string you know that you have to adjust the targeted string in your mind’s eye by aiming closer to the floor in order to correctly play the third string.
As you get better in your ability to play the targeted string without looking at your picking hand the next step is to play the correct string twice in a row, then three times, then four, then five; up to ten correct performances without looking.
Try this exercise for a few days and you will be pleasantly surprised how quickly your picking accuracy improves!
About the Author:
Mike Hayes is a guitar teacher, author, performing musician and session guitarist with over 30 years of professional experience. Find out more about how to learn guitar fast with his popular FREE e-course
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