Speed Picking

Want to know how to pick faster on guitar without getting sloppy? This chapter builds fast, clean alternate picking step by step, using speed picking exercises that grow from one string to full licks in A minor pentatonic.

You start with sixteenth notes on a single string, where your picking hand only has to move down and up, small and relaxed, in sync with the fretting hand. Then you take that motion across the strings in scale runs through box 1, including sequences that make you cross strings on an upstroke, the real skill behind fast lines. Next come speed bursts: short groups played faster than your comfortable tempo that snap onto a target note, then a rest to reset. The last lesson puts it all into picked licks with repeating shapes, pedal tones and descending fours.

Every exercise plays in your browser with a click, and the tempo ladder pushes you a few bpm at a time only when the notes stay even. A checkpoint at the end of each lesson tells you when to move on. By the end you'll play fast alternate-picked runs that stay clean, relaxed and in time.