Economy Picking Exercise 1
There is a a debate in the shred community over which style of picking is best, Economy or Alternate picking? My view is both are essential to know and to use. Many things can be played Economy picked faster, cleaner, and more fluid than Alternate picked. But alternate picking gives a more cohesive, structured sounding feel to phrases. Both sound really different and should at least be in the repertoire of every good lead guitarist.
For this exercise we will be looking at a technique I learned from Frank Gambale. When economy picking, one gets in trouble when changing direction sometimes. If you do 3 note per string runs and try to turn descend, you will have to do something to get your picking back on track. Watching which direction you start on each string, and how many notes you play per string is very important. Whatever direction you started with, if you pick an odd amount of notes and change strings, you will start the next string with the same directional pick you started off with. When turning around all one simply must do, is do an even amount of notes per string to change direction.
Economy Picking Exercise 1
Here we have a G Major scale. When economy picking it, we almost run into trouble on the high E string. If we were to do a third note, it would be down picked. To move back up and keep economy picking, we would need to put in one note alt picked, which isn’t a problem, but to keep the smooth flow of an economy picked run, it is better to do an even amount of notes like in this exercise. The second note is then an upstroke and you can now descend the scale economy picking everything.
