Picking Hand

Your picking hand decides whether your playing sounds tight or sloppy. This chapter builds the right-hand technique that every lead and rhythm style relies on: alternate picking, clean string changes, palm muting and string skipping.

You start with strict down-up alternate picking on A minor pentatonic at the 5th fret, keeping the motion small and the upstrokes as strong as the downstrokes. Then you play the same box in triplets, which teaches you to start a beat on either stroke, the skill behind fast pentatonic runs. Next comes palm muting, the tight, chunky chug of rock and metal rhythm guitar, on a low E riff. The last lesson covers string skipping: jumping over a string without hitting it, for wide octave and arpeggio sounds.

Each exercise plays in your browser with a click, so you hear the target feel and climb the tempo ladder one small step at a time. A checkpoint at the end of each lesson tells you when you're ready for the next. By the end you'll pick cleanly across all six strings and keep your rhythm parts tight.