Now is the time to put what we've learn so far to play a new picking technique : Alternate picking! Simply put, alternate picking is nothing more than down and up strokes. Sounds easy right? Maybe not at first. The main challenge here is to be able to be as efficient in your downstrokes that you are in your upstrokes. Most of us guitarist are stronger at one technique. The key is to work on your weaker technique to match the level of the other. If you find after playing the exercise below that you are struggling, go back and practice the previous lessons then come back t...

Here's a little sweep picking exercise. I'm not the best "sweeppicker" and most of the ones I do incorporate in my leads are 3 strings sweep. So here's a example of the pattern I do most often. Sweeping is something between playing arpeggio style and strumming. You don't actually pick every note but your don't strum either :). Like any exercise, start slow and speed it up. Pattern 2 will help you move your position from one string to another and pattern 3 will help shift the position up and down the neck.

This riff was created for GuitarWar as a riff battle. I had to draw a monster of GuitarWar and pretty much lost the war. Even if this didn't won the competition, it's still one of my favorite riff to improv over. Hope you have as much fun with this as I have.

Some strings over a fingerpicked guitar track to make it a little 'emotional'.

This is the perfect jam for practicing sustain and wammy bar stuff. I don't really know why but I never try to shred on this. I concentrate on making a "heavy" sounding solo. I've indicated to palm muting because this is what makes the sound. If you look closely, you'll see that there's not a whole lot going on in this clip. 3 powerchords! The thing is that you need to let ring some of the upstrokes. You won't get the same grove if you mute them.

The upstroke is the exact opposite of a downstroke. While we strike the string while going downward in a downstroke, we hit it going upward in an upstroke. This is a little trickier to do. Gravity naturally pull our hand towards the ground so the downstroke is a much natural movement. The upstroke is fighting against that. It's normal if you have more difficulty with it at first. Again in this lesson we'll be using a similar exercise than the previous where we'll be picking 4 times each string going from the high e string to the low E string. Don't forget to use ou...

Welcome to this 6th chapter of my metal rhythm series. This new song is packed with monster grooves and driving rhythm guitar tracks. The song consists of 6 riffs and each one will be covered in it's own lesson as in all my metal tutorials, I will play the riffs at normal speed and at a slower speed so you can better understand how to play them. In each video you will have a full view and a close up view. The riff for the song is as follows : 1 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 Here's the complete track for the song.

1st Bar We start the riff with a powerchord slide from A5 to G5 followed by two E notes. If you listen to the track you'll hear that the second G5 is played on the first snare hit. This is very important as this song is what we could call a power groove. Its power relies in the fact that it follows the drum's groove. After the G5 we'll work our way to the E5. The end of the first bar is very important. It's a recurring theme in the riff. We alternate from the F5 to the open E note. You'll notice this all through the song. 2nd Bar The ...

I put together this little jam while I was trying to forget a bad day at work, lol. Always try to make the best of a bad situation. This jam is in two parts, one mellow and the other a little more upbeat. This one is good for working on those lead changes.

A downstroke is achieved by striking a string with your plectrum (pick) in a downward motion. This means that you want to be above the string and strike the note while going downward (towards the floor). I've made a simple yet effective exercise to practice the downstrokes. It consists in picking each string 4 times using downstroke. We start on the low E string all the way to the High E string.

I've decided to make this tutorial for people who are new to guitar and wishes to learn how to play in a fingerpicking style. First of all I have never had lessons about this subject so I don't have the "classical approach" you would be taught if you attend such lessons. I learned how to fingerpick mostly by myself and adopted a hand positioning that was comfortable for me, it is NOT the classical way but it's a style that has served me well for years. So it can't be that bad lol I don't have long nails (another reason why I never played the classical hand positioning) so...

Ok, so here's part 2. We saw how to play using the thumb and using the one-finger-per-string method. That's great but how about mixing both of them? This is what this tutorial will be about. Still using the same three chords as part 1 , we will use our thumb to play the fifth string. Remember that the first string is always the smallest and it goes up towards the biggest. So thumbs on the fifth string, index on the fourth and so on. Look at pattern 1. We will play all four strings one after another in a downward motion. Your wrist shouldn't be moving since all fingers a...

I can't tell you how many times I've played over this one. Not a lot of you may recall this but there was once an attempt in the forum to do little solos competition. It never really took off but that was the basic riff I used. It's an easy chord progression, I mostly solo in pentatonic scales over this one.

Playing downstrokes is one of the most basic technique in guitar playing. We use it in many different styles but this tutorial will concentrate on how we use it in metal, hard rock and punk music. In this first part we'll look at using and Anchor and palm muting. As demonstrated in the video, I use my little finger as anchor. What an anchor provides you with is a better control over your hand movement. I keep my little finger in contact with the body of the guitar just in front of the bridge pickup. I also use the side of my finger to mute the smaller strings. This...

This third dexterity exercise is shorter. It only covers two bars but there's still a lot going on. We start the lick with a sweep over 4 strings. This one has a cool stretch in it. We go from the 5th to the 9th fret. Using all downstrokes, we play the 5th, 7th, 9th fret into a hammer-on from the 6th to the 8th fret on the 2 second. We then go back using upstrokes and playing the 7th fret of the 3rd and 4th string. Next is another sweeping but this time we'll do it over 3 strings. Starting on the 5th fret of the 4th string we go up to the 5th (3rd string) into a pull-...

In this exercise we will alternate between picking and doing hammer-ons. Most of the beginner guitarist I see have a tendency of picking everything. With that in mind, we'll work on alternating both techniques. This should help you make the switch between picking everything to picking once per string to using only legato techniques with hammer-ons. We will use the C major scale for all the exercises since it is a very important scale to learn. I will also change position so you can learn the fretboard at the same time. If you look at the exercise below, you will se...

This exercise takes my lesson "3 string sweeps" a little further by sliding from one sweep to another and descending into a third one. So the exercise is broken down into 3 patterns. Practice them seperately until you can play them with some ease. Once you have the first 2 patterns down look at the full pattern. Both patterns link together by a slide from the 7th to th 9th fret. Practice going from pattern 1 to pattern 2 by sliding. I recommend sliding from 7th to 9th using your pinky. This way your 3 other fingers will be ready to hit the next pattern Pattern 3 is link t...

This is a nice little run mixing hammer-ons and legato slides. Look at the first pattern. It consist for two hammer-ons followed by a slide. Practice this pattern until the sequence is flowing. Start by doing the hammer-ons on the two strings so that you can play them without any pause. After that include the slide. The next pattern is basically the same but instead of going down the scale you're coming back up. This lick will help you be more fluid if you start slow and speed up gradually.Hope you enjoy it.

1st Bar This riff is a very good picking exercise. So the first chord is a B5 but instead of playing the chords, we'll pick it's notes. Apart from the last bar the entire riff is 16 th notes. When I said it's a good picking exercise I really meant it ;) From the B5 position, we'll be alternating between the A# and the G on the 4th string. The first group of 8 notes is a very common metal picking pattern. You can build your own exercise using just that pattern. For the second part of the 1 bar we'll switch from the B5 to the C major. Alth...

Now that I can control my hand, I need to concentrate on limiting it's movement. When playing downstrokes, you really want to keep close to the strings you're playing. The further away from the string you are, the longer it takes to strike the string. This means that by limiting movement, you'll be able to acquire much more speed. The video will demonstrate just how you have to concentrate on your hand muscle. There is very little wrist movement at this point. All the work is done by the muscle close to your thumb.

The first riff sets the tone for the whole song. If you listen to it a few times you'll see that the riff always goes back to the pattern of the first bar. This riff can be divided into 4 patterns. Bar 1 - Bar 2 - Bar 4 - Bar 8. Now let's see those bars as patterns. So we have recurring patterns that creates the riff. The whole riff would be as follows : P1 - P2 - P1 - P3 - P1 - P2 - P1 - P4 When learning a new riff try to do the same as I just did. Break down the riff into smaller parts. If a song looks hard to learn because it is long, just remember that a lot...

This is a graphical representation of the guitar fretboard showing what notes are on what fret. This assumes you are tuned in standard tuning and using a 6 string guitar. This will become a very useful tool when working on lessons on Guitartricks.

The first dexterity exercise consist of a mix of sweeps and alternate picking. I play this exercise using only three fingers but it can be done with four if it's comfortable for you. I have large fingers and in the upper range of the fretboard, they get too squeezed together and it really makes it uncomfortable. This is why I naturally end up using only three fingers. starting on the 17th fret of the second string, we'll make a descending sweeping pattern where we'll play one note per string using upstrokes. So we'll play the 17th (2nd string), 16th (3rd string) and 1...

The fourth exercise has no sweeps, but concentrate on string skipping and alternate picking. We start the first bar by playing the 5th fret 5th string. Skipping over the 4th string we play the 5th and 4th fret of the 3rd string. When playing this I tend to play to lower notes with the major finger. Shifting to the 3rd fret position, we'll play the 3rd fret 5th string and again skip the 4th string to play the 2nd and 4th fret of the 3rd string. On the second bar, we'll play the 3rd fret on the 6th string and skip over the 5th to play the 5th and 4th fret on the 4th str...

In this exercise we'll go from picking all the notes to picking every other notes. Pull-offs are very often used along with other techniques, so gaining the ability to play them at will is very important. We'll use the C major scale for this exercise. To perform the pull-offs, you need to pick the first note then slightly pull the string down and release. By pulling the string you insert a little tension. Once released, this tension will make the string vibrate and produce the sound. This lesson has two parts. First part is making pull-offs using the C Major sc...

This tutorial will be a series of lessons meant to create a daily practice routine. Each exercise serves a particular purpose, working on a different aspect of guitar playing. This will b e a growing repertoire of lessons for you to pick from and create your own routine.

By the end of this tutorial you should be able to play a simple rock riff using the palm muting technique.

This tutorial includes exercises focusing on different note durations. I will add practice solos from time to time to help you apply these exercises in a practical way.

This tutorial will include many of the techniques and learning tools I use everyday. Some came from hours of trial and errors, others were passed on to me by other guitar players.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to play all the rhythm guitar riffs of a complete metal song. You'll be able to practice palm muting, alternate picking, Hammer-ons, pull-offs and many other techniques often found in metal music.

In this tutorial, I will help you learn the A Minor Scale using picking exercises. You'll learn how to play the scale ascending and descending. We'll also use picking techniques learned in previous tutorials.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to play all the rhythm guitar riffs of a complet metal song. You'll be able to practice palm muting, alternate picking, strumming, pull-offs and many other techniques often found in metal music.

In this tutorial we will take a close look at the use of downstrokes. The tutorial will be divided in three parts.

This tutorial will be a collection of dexterity exercises meant to help you work on different lead guitar techniques. I've tried to make them as musically interesting as I could. There's no reason exercises shouldn't be fun!

In this tutorial, I will help you learn the C Major Scale using picking exercises. You'll learn how to play the scale ascending and descending. We'll also use picking techniques learned in previous tutorials.

In this tutorial we will learn 3 basic picking techniques. These techniques are the foundation of most of the riffs and licks you'll learn. Every time you'll see someone using a pick, there's a good chance he'll be using one of the techniques we'll learn here.

This tutorial is a series of exercises to help you learn how to do pull-offs. We'll start from picking every note to making multiple pull-offs in a row.

This is the fourth chapter of my tutorial series on metal rhythm guitar. In this tutorial, you will be able to practice a lot of alternate picking and work on palm muting both single notes and powerchords.

This tutorial is meant as a collection of hammer-on exercises to help you gain accuracy and endurance. Take each exercise slow at first to learn each patterns, then work on speed.

This tutorial is filled of fingerpicking licks I've created. I've made them so they are musically interesting and not just generic exercises.

This tutorial is meant to show you some metal rhythm ideas for you to practice and help you develop your metal rhythm guitar skills.

In this tutorial you will find examples of 3 strings sweeps. These are easy sweeping patterns meant as an introduction to sweeping.

This tutorial will show you different strumming pattern while concentrating of the right hand movement. The lessons are aimed at helping you gain fluidity in your playing.

The second in my series of tutorials about metal rhythm. This one concentrates on how to use two guitar tracks in order to make some parts of a song stand out.

This tutorial is meant as a practice for metal "riffage". I've created 5 metal riffs that have all very special use of timing. I've also incorporated some cool fill-ins here and there. You will be able to practice palm muting, alternate picking, hammers-on, pull-offs all those over drums, guitar and bass :)

I've decided to make this tutorial for people who are new to guitar and wishes to learn how to play fingerpicking style. I will show you some basic fingerpicking techniques.

This tutorial will show you the first position of both minor and major arpeggios of the 7 degrees of the C major scale.

This is a descending pattern in the style of Yngwie Malmsteen. There's two spots to watch out for. First one is the shifting slide on the 2nd string. Slide from the 10th fret to the 9th with your index finger. The second spot that can cause your trouble at first is when you get to the 3rd string. It only has two notes on that string. This lick, as simple as it may look, is actually a very good exercise for finger independence. If you look at the whole pattern, it goes from 3 notes per string to 4, then 2 , then 3 and 3 again. Since it's not a steady 3 notes per str...

This is one of my favorite licks. Kirk Hammett uses this lick often in is solos. You need to play it fast so practice it a lot. Begin at a slow speed, increase gradually. In the example I play at the 12th fret but you can change position depending on the key of your solo. Play around with it, experiment with different positions. In the sound clip, I play the first two bars twice and then proceed with the other four bars. As you can see in the video, I try to keep my pick somewhere between the 1st and 2nd string. Since this lick goes back and forth between 2 stri...

I put together this little jam while I was trying to forget a bad day at work, lol. Always try to make the best of a bad situation. This jam is in two parts, one mellow and the other a little more upbeat. This one is good for working on those lead changes.

Here's a lesson showing my process when writing riffs. I concentrate on one hand at a time, starting with finding a good solid rhythm pattern with my right hand. Then, I add some basic chords to the create a first riffs. Once I have something good going on, I'll try a bunch of different things, this is where the fun comes in. I'll add fill-ins, palm muting, new chords maybe a silence or two to shake it up, anything goes. It's a very simple approach but a very good exercise to get your creativeness going and will generate some great ideas for your next songs. ...

This is a speed exercise. Learn it well at slow speed. Then as usual, increase speed. I love this pattern. Makes for quick and surprising speed. Also a great warm up exercise at slow tempo. I tabbed out one way of playing it but you can dramatically change the feel of the lick by inserting hammer-ons. You may also want to mute more or put more picking into it, explore and find the way that you feel more comfortable with. There's not much picking going on in this exercise. The only picking done is when you change string. Let's take the first string change for examp...

This is a nice little run mixing hammer-ons and legato slides. Look at the first pattern. It consist for two hammer-ons followed by a slide. Practice this pattern until the sequence is flowing. Start by doing the hammer-ons on the two strings so that you can play them without any pause. After that include the slide. The next pattern is basically the same but instead of going down the scale you're coming back up. This lick will help you be more fluid if you start slow and speed up gradually.Hope you enjoy it.

Now you have learned new blues licks by searching the enormous guitartricks database and you want to try them out. Here's your chance. I've made this clip and inserted a small silence time in it. Try to play your favorite lick in there. This will help you with timing. I call this my show off time :), since the drum and guitar stops, it's all you!

This is the perfect jam for practicing sustain and wammy bar stuff. I don't really know why but I never try to shred on this. I concentrate on making a "heavy" sounding solo. I've indicated to palm muting because this is what makes the sound. If you look closely, you'll see that there's not a whole lot going on in this clip. 3 powerchords! The thing is that you need to let ring some of the upstrokes. You won't get the same grove if you mute them.

This riff was created for GuitarWar as a riff battle. I had to draw a monster of GuitarWar and pretty much lost the war. Even if this didn't won the competition, it's still one of my favorite riff to improv over. Hope you have as much fun with this as I have.

I can't tell you how many times I've played over this one. Not a lot of you may recall this but there was once an attempt in the forum to do little solos competition. It never really took off but that was the basic riff I used. It's an easy chord progression, I mostly solo in pentatonic scales over this one.

Some strings over a fingerpicked guitar track to make it a little 'emotional'.

This is a two part video lesson on how to play the jam track "While I Daydream" available shortly in the Guitartricks Jam section. In this first part we'll see the picking part (arpeggio style) of the jam track. As you can see the pattern starts with a Em9/D. Same finger positioning as a C chord but two frets higher. To really get the feeling of the track you need to let the string ring, this give a very mellow feel to it. Also look at the 11th and 28th note played. They have an "s" in front meaning you need to slide to the note. Normally a slide is from one note to ano...

Here we are to the second part of the song. This part is strummed meaning it's not played note by note as the first part. Strumming requires you to have a relaxed wrist. The secret to a good strumming is to be able to get your hand as relaxed as possible without loosing your pick :) . If you're too tight, you won't get the same attack on the strings and it won't sound the same. The strings are strumming not picked. Picking chords leads to playing in an arpeggio style. You want the chord to sound as a whole and not 5 distinct notes. So relax! lol You'll see in the vid t...

Here's some basic stretching exercises that I do before starting a guitar session. Nothing really fancy but some basic stretching. Please always take it slow when doing stretching exercise as they do put a lot of strain on tendons. Hand injuries are very serious and trust me, they hurt :) . Please look at the video to see how to do them. If you can't reach all frets, just do the patterns with less frets. From time to time try to go to the next fret you can't reach but don't go too far. If it hurst, stop! And don't do 15 minutes without any breaks. Do it a few patterns a...

Playing bursts is a good way to gain speed. You can apply this exercise to just about any patterns. The principle is simple. Instead of doing a long scale run, break it down and "burst" it. Look at pattern 1. The pattern starts with a down stroke and it goes down-up-down and down on the next string. You can almost sweep the last two notes since they are both down strokes. Pattern 2 is the same except we add a note and finish on a upstroke. It's a good idea to practice exercise that don't always end on the same stroke so you practice stopping in both direction.

Here's an exercise to practice your right hand skills. First pattern is one stroke per string. If you look at the video you will see that you need to strike the 5th string with an upstroke and the 4th string with a down stroke. The pick actually stays between those two strings so there's less movement and loss of speed. Second pattern is the opposite. You start between the 2 strings only on the first strike. After the first you always end up on the outside when the 2 strike are done a string. So once the pattern is started it's up-down on the 5th string, then down-up on...

Hello everyone, here's a few chord patterns that I use when playing metal. The first pattern is your typical powerchord. A powerchord is constructed of three notes. A root, 5th and octave. Let's take the E5 powerchord for example. E is the root (open 6th string), B is the 5th (2nd frt 5th string) and the octave is again E played on the 2nd fret fourth string. I've put some examples of powerchords for you down below. Second chord is a powerchord with an added lower 5th. It still keeps the same powerchord name since you have the same 2 notes. Let's take A5 for example. ...

This first pattern uses both up and down strokes and uses only one chord (C). Please us the metronome for this exercise. (there's a button top left side of the lesson) This exercise introduces a new technique. When playing the two first note, you will strum AND palm mute them at the same time. This give a very rhythmic feel to it. So when you strum the note, place the side of your palm right in front of the bridge, almost on it. It has to be done in one motion, not strum than mute, strum AND mute. The video demonstrates it. So let's break it down. The pattern is...

This is a graphical representation of the guitar fretboard showing what notes are on what fret. This assumes you are tuned in standard tuning and using a 6 string guitar. This will become a very useful tool when working on lessons on Guitartricks.

Buying a new instrument is probably one of my favorite things to do as a musician. Going to the music store, trying out all the instruments, taking one home and playing it for hours. Great times indeed! Still, it can also be one of the most overwhelming situations for someone who's never done it. Which guitar should I buy? What do I have to look for? So many questions, so few answers. This lesson will help you make your first guitar shopping experience a lot less stressful and hopefully, help you find the instrument that is just right for you. Style...

Guitar Obviously, this is the most important item to acquire. Guitars comes in all shapes and sizes. Because of this, it's often overwhelming for most beginners to shop for their first guitar. Please refer to our guide to buying a guitar to help you get through your first guitar shopping experience. Guitar Case (gig bag or hard shell) Having a guitar case is very important to protect your guitar from being damaged. Cases comes i...

I do love fingerpicking but part of me still lies deep into metal. I decided to post part of one of my song as an example of how I build multi track guitar parts. This is not something new but it does work for me. First thing I do is come up with a good riff (yeah, like that's easy..). At least a riff that sounds good to me. After I got the basic idea of the riff, I think of the mood I want to set. In the example below, I was looking for a dark, heavy sound. The next thing is to record the first guitar. Then I examine the riff and try to see which key I'm in :). The bes...

I was fooling around with guitar one night and came up with this. Really fun to play. Sound a lot like some ZZ top (Tush) riff the more I listen to it. I decided to play it with a clean sound but a distortion would sound cool too. I like the last bar a lot. Use this riff to insert your own tricks since the pattern is build to let you insert a small trick after three bars. Hope you have as much fun playing this as I have.

Here's a little exercise I've came up with to help me with alternate picking. I like this exercise because it's a repetitive pattern with a small tempo variance at times. It's good to help you change tempo without missing the beat. Fun to play with friends too :) I was suppose to tab out an acoustic trick today but decided this was too fun to not post it ASAP. So Enjoy and let me know what you think of it.

This is an example of how to use acoustic-electric progression. The first track is fingerpicked on acoustic. The main riff is played once and enters the second track (electric) at the end of the riff. After that you can double up the acoustic riff by playing it on electric. I normally add a third track which is a heavier electric guitar playing powerchords. The third guitar will add more weight to the riff. If would build a song around this riff I would probably start with the acoustic on first verse, join the electric in the chorus, go back to acoustic, bringing the elec...