ECONOMY PICKING: PART 2 Economy picking is a combination of sweep picking and alternate picking. These techniques are applied in conjunction with each other in order to produce the most economic pickin pattern possible. In order to understand how this works, we must study each of these techniques individually. Alternate picking is the most economical way of playing more than one note on the same string, and involves alternating between downstrokes and up-strokes (a different stroke for each note).
Outside Versus Inside
Let’s take an A note on the 5th fret of the high E string, and an F note on the 6th fret of the B string. If you were to repeat these two note (A, F, A, F etc), it is possible to alternate pick this pattern in two ways. Firstly, you could use a down-stroke for the A note and an up-stroke for the F note. Secondly, you could do the opposite. Both methods use alternate picking, but one is more economic than the other. The first of these methods demonstrates the old adage, “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line”. Here, the pick works within the gap between the two strings (this is known as ‘inside ‘picking); whereas, in the second example, the pick has to pass over each string in order to pick from the ‘outside’ each time. This involves far more work with the right hand. So, from this, we can see that there is a simple rule that ensures maximum economy when picking; ‘Always move the pick directly to each new string’. In other words, always move from a fat string to a thin string with a downstroke and vice versa. In order to apply this rule,
you need to be able to sweep pick. Sweep picking is a technique that involves picking more than one note with a single continuous stroke of the pick. This can only be done when changing from string to string. In the future, we will see that sweep picking can also be used with
“Sweep picking involves picking more than one note with a single continuous stroke of the pick.”
scales, but, for this lesson, we are going to confine our study to arpeggios.
EXERCISE 1 In the previous lesson, we studied this exercise, and it was emphasised that the two consecutive up-strokes in each 3-note group should be played as one continuous stoke (like a controlled up-strum). Remember, you must only hold one note down at the same time with the fingers of the fretting hand.
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