In this subscription, I'll share all my best practices and routines that helped not only me but hundreds of students in the last 20 years.

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How I Developed My Picking Technique

When I started out way back in 1992 I was lucky enough to borrow a copy of Vinnie Moore’s first instructional video. This was the very first video I saw and it set quite a high standard right from the get-go to say the least.

At the end of this video, he shows his alternate picking routine that he did daily for quite some time and clearly with great results. The routine itself was good but more than that, it showed me a methodology on how to work on your technique and not rely on only trying to learn licks.

I started working on this daily and then expanded it with other exercises, all played at a slow tempo. I realized quite quickly that getting the synchronization down perfectly was a huge priority since that’s the key to a great-sounding picking technique.

I first thought that I’d start very slowly and then gradually increase the tempo until several months later where I would be a guitar hero. I even tried to do the guitar magazine prescribed “start slow, raise the metronome speed and work on increasing your edge tempo” type practicing on some licks from songs I liked. This never worked for me and I always ended up with the nagging feeling that my practice session did more harm than good.

Frustrated and not really knowing how to get my speed up I simply kept practicing my (the revised Vinnie Moore one) routine daily and kept learning new licks I liked even though I couldn’t play them up to tempo at all.

After a few weeks of this, I noticed something curious.

Even though I hadn’t pushed the tempo at all in my daily routine, and only played the licks I was learning as a treat for making it through the routine for that day. The licks started to sound and feel much better, and also I found that day by day, week by week I was able to play them faster and faster without working on them specifically.

This changed everything for me and I believe this way of practicing is what really built a solid technique that I can rely on.

I’ve seen the same results in 100’s of students as well and it all really comes down to if you’re disciplined enough to do the work or not.

I’ve since discovered other ways of practicing that’ll speed up the process and enable you to find your problem areas but the core of my technique building is still these long-form picking routines. It’s not necessarily fun but the results speak for themselves if you put the work in.

If you’re curious about this way of practicing and also want to find out about my other strategies you can find all of it in my Alternate Picking Deep Dive subscription. Now with the Teachable version, you can post comments on each lesson so I can help you out if you get stuck or just want some encouragement. Hope to see you there!

/Jon