WARNING! Sometimes screen readers like to repeat a line when scrolling down through a blog post. So, it's a good idea to run your cursor over that line to make sure that you aren't adding notes to a scale or pattern that are not there. I've noticed that my screen reader has done this when I review my own posts to the blog. So, I thought I would give everyone else a heads up about that before jumping into today's lesson.

In this lesson we are going to talk about using a pick in greater detail. In the last lesson, we looked at the picking pattern for the C major scale. Ignoring the notes for a moment, let's rewrite the picking pattern all by itself so that we can discern more clearly what is going on from a structural perspective. Remember, d = down stroke and u = up stroke in our notation.


E string d, u, d
A string d, u, d
D string d, u


It is important to keep in mind that when using a pick, you want to set up your picking patterns so that they flow nicely--especially when you are moving from one string to the next. In the above pattern, the first two lines begin with down strokes and end with down strokes. This is because we want our pick to be able to naturally move down to the next string when we finish playing the sequence of notes on the indicated string we are currently on. When alternate picking, if the first note you play on a string is with a down stroke, and the number of notes you play on that string is odd, you will end with your pick on a down stroke. If the number of notes on that string is even, you will end on an up stroke when alternate picking. If you start out on an up stroke instead, then an odd number of notes will cause your alternate picking to end on an up stroke and an even number of notes will cause you to end on a down stroke when alternate picking. I recommend writing out these picking patterns with examples in your notes, because this is one of those all important things that people ignore and then realize five or ten years later they should have been paying very close attention and would have saved a lot of time if they had simply been aware of these simple rules.

Now, I am going to repeat myself a bit, because i know someone is going to ignore what i just said thinking this has little significance. But, trust me, it makes the difference between an okay guitarist and one who can advance their playing with ease. The idea is to become extremely aware of these even and odd picking rules. The reason is because if you pay close attention to this early on, you will avoid a lot of problems later on when playing complex patterns on the guitar. Because you will start to see how to modify the number of notes you play on a given string to set your pick up to head in the right direction, depending on whether you want to move to the string above or the string below the one you are currently on. This is often why a lot of professional guitarists play so smoothly and beginning guitarists struggle to get their pick to make the transition from one string to the next. The professionals, either intuitively or consciously, have a feel for which direction the pick ends up heading in depending on whether or not you are alternate picking an even or odd number of notes on a string. Frank Gambale is a guitar teacher who stresses the importance of these sort of picking rules in his instructional videos. And it is the reason why he can smoke on the guitar and leave others in the dust. You can find numerous clips by Frank on how to improve your picking on www.youtube.com. Usually, when playing scales or long patterns of notes, you want to try to use three notes per string as you are ascending up the scale or run. When you get to the last string that you are playing notes on, you then plan to use an even number of notes on that string so that your pick will end on an up stroke. This way your pick is heading in the right direction to descend the scale or run in reverse order as you return to using three notes per string. For example, we are going to play the C major scale over about two and a half octaves and demonstrate the picking pattern with the notes so that you can experience the turn around first hand.

E8id, E10mu, E12pd
A8id, A10mu, A12pd
D9id, D10mu, D12pd
G9id, G10mu, G12pd
B10id, B12ru, B13pd

So far, we have used three notes per string as we ascended the C-major scale, but, on the High E string, we are going to use only two notes so that we can turn around.

H10d, H12u

Since we end on an up stroke, we can now just move right back up to the B string, since our pick is already heading in that direction.

B13pu, B12rd, B10iu
G12pu G10md, G9iu,
D12pu, D10md, D9iu
A12pu, A10md, A8iu
E12pu, E10md, E8iu

This may be a little tricky to read in reverse when moving back up a scale, but if you take it slow and run your cursor over each note, you should be able to get a good feel for how this scale ascends, turns around, and descends back to the starting point. Now, if you like, you can add the E9 note to get four notes on the low E string or drop the E8 note to leave only two notes on the low E string when descending the scale to make it possible to turn around on the low E string and continue cycling through the scale pattern. Note that if you choose to add the note on E9, you are adding a note that does not actually belong to the C major scale, but musically, it might sound nice anyway. I'll leave it up to you for a personal exercise to determine for yourself how you would adjust your fingering to employ using the note on E9 along with the C major scale to fascilitate being able to have your pick do a turn around at that end of the scale.


Corey J. Bray