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Guitar Lessons For Beginners – How To Improve Your Picking Technique in just 3 quick & easy steps
By Mike Hayes | October 17, 2009
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 is just three:
How To Improve Your Picking Technique
Step 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.
practice tip: a great way to practice your tremolo picking is
while you are watching TV.
Step 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 tip: practice slowly we want to get a clear picture of
where our strings are in our mind’s eye; remember speed is a by-
product of accuracy.
Step 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.
Picking hand target practice
* 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 we number the strings 1 = the string nearest the floor / six
= thickest string
* 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 (picking
hand) on each string until you find the string that is vibrating.
If you intended to play the third string however 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 at 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,
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!
By now I bet you are ready to start cranking out more songs on
the guitar in less time than you ever thought possible, right?
So then now get FREE Instant Access to my “How To Remember 1,000
Songs” eCourse. When you visit: http://www.guitarcoaching.com
You’ll get the first of my instant “Song Templates” to get you
playing guitar in less time than you thought possible.
From Mike Hayes – The Guitar Coaching Guy & the Express Guitar
System
Topics: Beginner Guitar Lesson, Guitar Tips | 1 Comment »
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July 11th, 2010 at 9:22 am
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