Guitar lessons: If you want to build some serious speed in your lead, focus on one hand at a time. And that means fret placement on your fretting hand to ensure the economy of movement and alternate picking with your picking hand.
1. Fret hand
Get acquainted with the exercise by placing your fretting fingers on the right frets. For bar 1 of the exercise below, use your first, third and fourth fingers; for bar 2, use your first, second and fourth fingers.
Warm up by using hammer-ons and pull-offs to produce the notes. Don’t pick yet!
Guitar lesson: Getting started with hammer-ons for lead and chords
2. Pick hand
Alternate picking means never playing two downstrokes or two upstrokes in a row. Try muting the strings all together with your fret hand so that you can focus on picking evenly and transitioning to a new string cleanly.
Remember, no fretting for this stage of the exercise!
Essentials Lesson: Alternate picking
3. Combine them for this exercise
Click in top right of tab to enlarge
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“It’s the best guitar in the world”: The Silver Sparkle Gibson Les Paul Florentine that Noel Gallagher played on Be Here Now fetches over $280,000 at auction
