Quick Guitar Tip: Practice Alternate Picking

Another quick tip for beginner guitarists: Practice alternate picking. Basically, you want to use your guitar pick to switch between picking in a down or up direction.

A good exercise to practice this on is the Minor Pentatonic scales that I recently covered in earlier posts. Instead of each note being played in a down (or perhaps up) pick direction, try rotating between down picks and up picks as you work through these patterns.

Go slow and focus on having each note sounding clean. With practice, your speed will increase over time.

Do you use alternate picking with your guitar playing? Do you have any other guitar tips for beginners? Please share your feedback with us!