Flatpicking Fundamentals!-Simple Exercises For Developing World Class Technique

Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today with some really simple but very effective exercises for your picking and your fretting hands to help you develop a really good, solid, and clean picking and fretting technique. This will serve as a great springboard for anything else that you're going to learn in the context of bluegrass lead guitar, or really just lead guitar in general. So as always, hit the link down in the video description to get the tabs for this lesson. Let's jump into it. So this first idea that I want to show you here, really simple, we're just going to do So I'm just doing the 3rd string open and I'm doing alternate picking as 16th notes on that.

Just 1-e-and, 2-e-and, 3-e-and, 4-e-and, 1-e-and, 2-e-and, 3-e-and, 4-e-and.

Okay. I know that's very simple, maybe even a bit simplistic, but there's a couple of things that I want you to zone in on here. Um, number one, let's get our alternate picking down here, and we want to dial in where our pick strokes are falling rhythmically. So what that means is, again, most of bluegrass lead guitar is going to be played as 16th notes, and we're going to count that like 1, e, and 2 and 3 and 4 and. It's 4 notes per beat. So 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. And what we want on the pick strokes, we want down on 1, up on and— I'm sorry, down on 1, up on e, down on and, and up on Uh, okay, so it feels ridiculous saying that, but again, down on 1, up on E, down on 1— I'm on and— and up on, uh. So that's 1, E, and, uh, 2, E, and, uh, 3, E, and, uh, 4, E, and, uh.

Okay.

So that, that is alternate picking right there. It's your downstrokes falling on 1 and and your upstrokes falling on E and A. Now sometimes the execution of that is challenging as you're moving around and you're throwing hammer-ons and pull-offs into the mix, but that is it. It's a very simple idea. Just down on 1, up on E, down on and up on A. Okay, so that's one thing to get with that. Another thing is you want to make sure that that pick— that your, your picking is sounding smooth. What we don't want is this. We don't want that harsh staccato thing. We want a really smooth, solid outflow of 16th notes.

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.

Okay. And then the other thing to get down here is, as we're doing these picking exercises, we're developing our alternate picking technique, we want to simultaneously be practicing our timing. So, um, if you've watched this channel at all, you know that I'm a big fan of practicing along with drum beats and train beats, uh, like drum tracks specifically. I like that more than I do playing along with a metronome. And if you want to, you can check out this video right here where I do a much deeper dive into why I like playing with a drum track more than I do with a metronome. But that's what I'm gonna do with each one of these exercises here is we're gonna get the idea down, practice it with our smooth picking technique, and then we also wanna dial in our timing. So this is not a speed building lesson. I've got a ton of videos on this channel talking about that. But this lesson is just about getting our foundation, our technique and our timing foundation set and then any of the other stuff that you learn in this style will be a whole lot easier. So real quick, I'm gonna play this picking idea here along with a train beat, and I'm not gonna play it fast. This is gonna be at 50 beats a minute. I'm gonna be doing 16th notes at 50 beats a minute along with a train beat, and that's gonna sound like this. So I'll let that drum track play for a little bit so you can hear those brushes spelling out. 1 and 2 and, here we go.

And a 4 and. I'll count it out. 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a 1.

So as simple as that little exercise is, I promise you it is very effective. You want to practice getting that smooth technique. We want to practice our timing along with that. And then you also want to practice dialing in your alternate picking technique. Okay, so I want to give you a couple of variations on that. So the next one, we're gonna be doing essentially the same thing, but we're gonna come over here to the open 4th string, and I want you to do 1, and then go to the 3rd string, 2, and Back to the 4th string.

3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a.

So that's all we're doing. We're just, um, we're adding another string into the mix here.

1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a. E-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a.

Same deal, um, 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a. So our up and our down strokes are still falling in the same place. You want to get that smooth technique. And we also want to practice our timing. So again, I'm gonna pull up the train beat, 50 beats a minute, and I'll do this second exercise with it.

All right, here we go.

So for the next idea, we're just— we're gonna take the previous one there, and we're gonna shorten it just a little bit. What I want you to do is just do down and up on the 4th string, down and up on the 3rd string.

So we're gonna do 1, e and, 2, e and, 3, e and, 4, e and. Okay, 1, e and, 2, e and, 3, e and, 4, e and. Okay.

So we're just going in between those two strings a little bit quicker here. So again, same deal, smooth technique. Watch where you're— watch where your up and down strokes fall, and then we'll practice it along with the train beat to develop our timing. And that's gonna sound like this. All right, here we go. Okay, what we want to do next is, um, we're going to do this.

We'll do 1 e and a 2 e and a 3 e and a 4 e and a.

So we'll do 1 e and on the 4th string and then over to the 3rd string 2, E, and back to the 4th string.

3, E, and 4, E.

And I wanted to throw this in there because a lot of times when people are learning alternate picking, and, and they might be learning it through like a fiddle tune, they might be learning it through their scales, they're usually— they, they understand the concept and they're usually fine with it, um, when they're switching strings as long as each new string starts on a downstroke, but it starts to trip them up just a little bit whenever you, you have to start a new string with an upstroke. So that's why I wanted to throw this in here. So we're going to do 1-e-and, and then up on the 3rd string, uh, 2-e-and, uh, 3-e-and, uh, 4-e-and, uh, 3-e-and, uh, 4-e-and, uh, 1-e-and, uh, 2-e-and, uh, 3-e-and, uh, And again, our, our pick strokes are falling exactly where they're supposed to be rhythmically. That hasn't changed at all. Um, and then we're going to keep that smooth technique there.

We don't want—

we don't want that harsh staccato sound.

We just—

but we also want to practice our timing with this. So let me bring back up the train beat at 50 beats a minute. And play this idea with it.

Here we go. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Okay, let's add to that And we're gonna take that idea and we're just gonna kind of go to an extreme version of that, which is crosspicking. And with that one, we're gonna, we're gonna do alternate picking, but every time we change pick strokes, we're going to change strings. So that's gonna go like this. It's just— so that's down on the 4th string, up on the 3rd, down on the 2nd, up on the 3rd, and that's our pattern.

1-e-and-a.

That's our, that's our beat.

1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a.

Again, we want to avoid— ah, we don't want the harsh staccato sound.

Just 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a.

Let's practice our timing with the train beat at 50 beats a minute.

1, 2, 3, here we go.

Okay, so just to recap what we've done so far, we started off— again, with all of these examples, we're doing alternate picking and we're doing 16th notes. Okay, so the first example was this: 1, just on the 3rd string. And then the second one 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a.

And then the third one, 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a. On the fourth one, 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a. And then the fifth one, 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a. Okay.

So one more time, let me go through all 5 of those and I'll play that along with my train beat backing track at 50 beats a minute. 1, 2, 3.

Example 1. Example 2. Example 3. Example 4. One key and a two key and a three key and a four key and a two key.

Example 5. I wanted to show this to you because these are really, really— again, they're, they're very simple, but they're very, very effective. And I wanted to show this because I get a lot of students, I get a lot of people that have maybe picked up some of my courses, and, you know, they're coming in and they're wanting to, you know, learn how to play fast and learn how to improvise and learn how to improvise, um, you know, over fiddle tunes. And they're wanting to you know, learn solos by Tony Rice and Billy Strings and Brian Sutton and Molly Tuttle and all that good stuff, which is awesome. Um, but again, this stuff right here, this technique stuff, is the foundation. It's this clean alternate picking and your timing. And if you don't have this stuff down, that other stuff is going to feel wobbly, it's going to sound frantic when you're trying to play fast, and there's just going to be something missing there. But you'll go back a little bit, practice some of these very simple ideas. And by the way, this works great if you're like brand new to lead guitar, it works great if you're new to flatpicking, and this also works great if you're an intermediate or even an advanced player and you just like to periodically go back and just really, really hammer the fundamentals. I think it was, I think it was Michael Jordan that said something along the lines of like, you know, constant practice of the fundamentals is the key to excellence. So it's not like we just learn, you know, alternate picking and learn how to, you know, do, you know, learn how to play it smoothly and in time, and then we're done and we graduate and we just move on. You do learn new things and you do, um, you know, advance up in your guitar playing journey, um, but you're always practicing these fundamentals— alternate picking, smooth technique, and timing. You're always playing this stuff. So again, whether you're brand new to lead guitar, brand new to flatpicking, or even you're an intermediate to advanced player, it's good to go back and go over this really foundational, really fundamental stuff. So, all right, so now just a few more things here, because as of right now we've only used open strings. We haven't done any fretting at all. Okay, so what I want to give you here next, uh, we're going to keep practicing our alternate picking, but we're going to we're going to, um, throw in some fretted notes here. And I've got just a really simple idea for it. It's going to go like this. We'll do Okay, so at this point in this lesson, I've talked a lot about alternate picking and how we'll do 1, e and, uh, 2, e and, and it's just straight down and up, and those pick strokes fall where they're supposed to rhythmically. Again, down strokes on 1 and, and up strokes on e and, uh, that stays consistent. But now I'm just doing open string, 1st fret, 2nd fret, 3rd fret, and I'm doing that exact same thing over each one of the strings. On the 6th, on the 5th, on the 4th, on the 3rd, on the 2nd, on the 1st, and then straight back down. Okay, now a couple of things on your fretting technique, because the left hand is very, very important in bluegrass lead guitar. I know the right hand gets the most amount of attention because this style requires just as much, if not more, out of your picking hand than almost any other style of guitar playing does. But we don't want to neglect the left hand. So here's a couple of things here. The sweet spot on the fret is— so, um, so over here on our 3rd fret right here, so that has, you know, up here's the top down here is the bottom. You want your fretting finger as close to the bottom of the fret without being on the actual fret bar. You don't want it on that because it's going to buzz and it's going to mute it, and it just— it sucks. But you want it kind of right above the bottom of the fret. That's, that's, that's, that's the sweet spot of the fret. You don't want it up here at the top because it buzzes and it just doesn't sound nearly as full and nearly as rich as it does whenever you're up there at the bottom of the fret. So whenever you're doing this little exercise, pay attention to make sure your fingers are— when they're coming down on those frets, they're doing it as close to the bottom of the fret as you can get without being on, without being on the fret bar.

There we go.

So we'll do— and then same thing on the 5th string, same thing on the 4th string. Same thing on the 3rd string, same thing on the 2nd string, same thing on the 1st string, and then let's just come right back down. Okay, one other thing I need to mention about your fretting fingers is I'm not— there's almost no wasted motion there. It's almost to the point where you want to— by that 3rd fret, I've got all the fingers kind of— I'm not doing, you know, kind of once I fret it there, I'll leave it there. Okay, which explains, you know, why a lot of times, you know, all of us know and love Tony Rice. But it's weird because a lot of times you'll see him performing and he's just playing this just beautiful, clean, fast, just amazing, you know, classic Tony Rice stuff. But when you watch him, a lot of times it almost— it doesn't look like he's doing that much. He is doing a a lot, but he has very little wasted motion. There's very little wasted motion in his playing. And one of the keys to that is, um, with your left hand, is minimizing movement, minimizing unnecessary movement. And a great way to do that for this exercise is just leave those fingers where they are until you have to move them. What we want to avoid is this. Do you see the difference? It's a little different when I'm going down because I have to lift those fingers up in order to make the note sound. But when you're going up, it gets just leave those fingers there until you absolutely have to move them. And that just minimizes the wasted motion. But we don't want— you know, I think Marcel calls those flyaway fingers. Okay, so we don't want the frantic, like, flyaway fingers. We want to just minimize unnecessary movement. So remember that: bottom of the frets, and then kind of minimize that unnecessary movement. Again, doing straight alternate picking through that but we still want to practice our timing. So let me play that now again, train beat, 50 beats a minute.

1, 2, 3, 4. Do it again. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Okay, so I've got just a few more examples that I want to give you here, because while that exercise that I just showed you is very— it's great for developing picking and fretting technique at the same time, it's not a particularly musical idea. It's not a particular, like, a, like, a very usable idea. But now what I want to give you is something that really sounds like bluegrass here. And if you want a little bit more of a deep dive into this, check out this video right here where I go through and really explain the pick strokes and all that kind of good stuff. But what we want to do is we're gonna play essentially, you know, what I sometimes like to call the bluegrass scale. It's just a major blues scale, that's all it is. And that's gonna go like this. We're gonna do Okay, so I'm picking everything through that.

1, E, and 2, E, and 3, E, and 4, E, and 1, E, and 2, E, and 3.

And then again, using the ideas from the previous exercise when it comes to our fretting, again, we want to minimize unnecessary motion. Okay, so that's going through that little bluegrass scale there, and I'm picking everything. Now I want to do a combination of picked notes and hammer-ons and pull-offs. Now with this, my pick strokes are still going to fall exactly where they need to fall. Again, downstrokes on 1 and and, upstrokes on e and uh, but there will be a few pick notes that I'll leave out whenever I do a hammer-on or a pull-off. That's going to sound like this. So we'll do Okay. So what you'll notice whenever I'm doing that with the hammer-ons and pull-offs, there are a couple of places where we end up doing 2 downstrokes or 2 upstrokes in a row, but that's keeping those downstrokes and upstrokes where they need to fall rhythmically, and it makes everything a whole lot easier to play. So again, I've got the tabs for you, and you can look and see that the, the downstrokes and the upstrokes will fall on the exact same place on the version with hammer-ons and pull-offs as it does on the version where everything is picked. So one more time, bluegrass scale with hammer-ons and pull-offs.

1, e, and, uh, 2, e, and, uh, 3, e, and, uh, 4, e, and, uh, 1, e, and, uh, 2, e, and, uh, 3.

Okay, so let me, um, play the bluegrass scale with all picked notes and with hammer-ons and pull-offs. Again, working on our timing with that train beat backing track at 50 beats per minute.

1, 2, 3, 4.

I'll do that again with all picked notes.

1 and a 2 All right, hammer-ons and pull-offs.

One more time with hammer-ons and pull-offs. Okay, what I've shown you in this lesson, we did 5 examples where we just used open strings, um, where we did alternate picking across those open strings. And again, you want to, you want to dial in and be aware of your pick strokes, where they're falling rhythmically. Again, we want downstrokes on 1 and and, upstrokes on e and a.

1 e and a, 2 e and a, 3 e and a.

So we did that using a bunch of open strings, and then we did another example where we pick all of the notes as 16th notes, but we work on our fretting technique, working on getting our finger as close to the bottom of the fret as we can. That's where the sweet spot of the fret is. And also minimizing finger motion to avoid the flyaway fingers. And then from there, we did the bluegrass scale with all picked notes. And then with a combination of hammer-ons and pull-offs. Okay, and what you've got there is a group of really, really, really great exercises to help you really develop some flatpicking foundations. Again, practice that along with the train beat. Practice it as slow as you need to. Again, that was 50 beats a minute. You can do it slower. You can practice it along with train beat backing tracks, and I'll link to the one that I was practicing with down in the video description. You can use the Strum Machine, but the key to all of this stuff is don't worry about playing this stuff fast. Get it smooth, get it solid, get it clean, and get it in time, and that will be a great, great, great flatpicking foundation for you to lay in your guitar playing. So again, um, hit the link down in the video description to get the tabs for this lesson. Thank you as always for hanging out, and I will see you next time.