Most great Guitar Players mix a lot of different techniques when they are playing, and if that is the end goal then the scale exercises you do should also contain that element!
In this lesson I am going to go over some ways to take simple exercises and use them to combine legato, alternate picking and sweeping or economy picking.
Technique and Scale Exercises are for sound
For me it is in the end much more about having techniques so that I can play the music that I want to play and get it to sound right and having a flexible technique in terms of legato and picking is very useful for this.
Technique is there to help me play the Music that I want to play with The Phrasing and Sound I want to hear!
The exercises in this video is My take on how this works it is important to remember that the best solution is for you to
Find YOUR way of combining different techniques incorporate it into your practice routine and playing
Basic Scale Exercise and a few options
Example 1 is a C major scale in the 8th position played with a 3NPS fingering.
In the video I play it with alternate picking:
You can do this mixing with legato as well. Let’s do that like this: Down Up Hammer-on:
and of course you can also do Down Hammer-on UP:
Technique priorities – what to choose
The way I think about this is no that it has to sound the same, different techniques sound slightly different and when I play I am going to use the technique that is playable or easy AND that sounds the best.
The goal is to use the different sounds and dynamics of the technique in our phrasing
So it doesn’t have to sound the same!
Actually you make choices on this already with the exercises.
Here’s the scale in 3rds with alternate picking:
And you can try to add as much legato as possible by doing this:
But somehow it’s nice to have one more picked note to get it to sound a little more natural:
With all of these exercises I am choosing the approach and techniques that I like and that fits to me, but of course this is different from person to person so you might find that other combinations work better for you. The important thing is to make sure you can play it in time and that you get the phrasing or sound that you like.
Adding Economy picking to the mix
Of course you can also work with sweeping or economy picking, When playing arpeggios this becomes very practical. For example with diatonic triads.
And we can combine all of it in an exercise like this with triads up one down the next
It is up to your imagination and you get to challenge yourself and develop your ability to mix
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