When I practice scales I always start on the down pick and alternate from there. If you practice it right each note up and down nexk is picked in the same direction.
Now what about when you are playing for real? For instance, the Wish You Were Here riff on the E minor pentatonic starts on G on the sixth string. Should an up pick or down pick be used, or does it matter?
When practicing the scale it is an up pick because the scale starts on an open E which is picked downwards so G has an up pick.
I guess what I am asking is there a benefit to pick the notes in the scale a standard way (ie. the notes in the scale are picked the same direction in practice and real play)? Or don’t worry about it, pick the first note down and go from there?
In real play, I tend toward efficient picking - basically moving the smallest distance to the next string, skipping over as seldom as possible. Sometimes this takes some working out ahead of time. I am not very accurate with picking, so I tend to naturally use this method.
For scales, I remember a Justin class where we were told to do all down picks, all up picks, alternate down/up, and alternate up/down. This covers every change to an adjacent string that we’d see in play.
My natural tendency for scales is to use a down when finger 1 is fretting, and up when it is finger 3 or 4. Not sure why I tend to do this.
It depends on what you want to achieve. Often downpicks will be weighted more heavily so for music where you want to accentuate something you use downpicking. A good example is a lot of blues, that much older blues style. Of course a lot of licks, as justin teaches, require properly thought out alternate picking to be played fluently even there you meed to make choices. I will say that I tend towards the more orthodox alternate picking because it helps me keep time, especially playing a lot of hard rock and metal at faster tempos. I also front a band with guitar and voice so I am acutely aware of tempo and rythmn. I was recently getting into Going Over The Hill and there all downpicks help to accentuate every note and almost force out the raw sound which is what I was going for in order to capture that acoustic sound from ~100 years ago
@kestrel as a beginner you should be down picking on the beat and up picking on the ands. Also if you start the Em pentatonic on the G note you will be playing the G Major pentatonic which will fit better to Wish You Were Here
What @stitch is saying is the correct answer… and as a side note to that - please do not spend too much time or effort (or put too much meaning) on practicing the major scale patterns all the way through with alternate picking.
From a technical point of view there are many reasons for why that might be a waste of your time, but if you’re a beginner I don’t think explaining those will help.
But the short version; picking through an entire scale is very hard, much harder than picking most licks that are actually useful in real music. Hard and useless vs easier and useful - which one makes the most sense to spend practice time on?
I’m not saying scales are useless or should not be practiced. But in my opinion the main reason for practicing scales is to get the sound of the scale into your ears. After a certain point, that will allow you to play within a scale both up and down on a single string, or moving between the strings. But you don’t get there by memorizing the patterns, you get there by knowing the sounds you want to hear and knowing how to recognize and play those intervals.
Picking wise, treat each phrase as its own thing, ignore how it’s placed within a scale. For beginners, 99% of the time you’ll decide whether to start a phrase with an up or down pick based on the beat that the phrase starts on. This is what Stitch explains.
All I will add is dont kill your selfnover the scales. I really thought they were improtant at the beginning also but then as justin has been saying and he will explain why soon depending where you are in the course, Learn them as a framework. You will use them as a guide on how to make your music. Thats the gold.
He has a comment in a video. He says no one goes to a show tonsee their favorite bamd or guitarist play scales. They go to see them play music.
I play Wish You Were Here with all downs… mostly. Eighth note all down picking.
The only exception to this rule - for this song - are the 16th notes on the A string,. When I play the second note on the A string, it’s either an up pick or a hammer on.
Ok, if I have followed the responses accurately, in a nutshell the approach to picking an actual riff or melody is not static or rigid. It could be a down pick on the beat and and up on the &, or mostly all downpicks for emphasis like the Wish You were Here opening riff. Also it is relative to where you start.
Finally, practicing scales for the sake of playing scales is not the goal. Playing actual music and improvising to real backing tracks or your friend playing the rhythm track is what your after. I get that, in almost three years I really have only practiced C major, Em amd Am pentatonic. And after each five minutes of practice tried to play real music.
I do practice scales not only to learn the scale but limber up my fingers and also to improve my accuracy of picking the right string. One day I would like to pick out individual notes when playing chords for a song (eg ala Good Riddance, Blowing in the wind, etc etc). I practice the scales without looking so I think this will help. Correct me if I am wrong on this or anything else above.
I wanted to make sure a distinction was clear here - you probably want to select a picking pattern and stick with it for a particular riff in a song. You may want to change the picking pattern if the same riff occurs in a different song depending, as you mention, how you are starting into the riff. When I let my control go, I make mistakes, so thinking through the cleanest picking, then learning that, seems to work best for me. I really struggle with accuracy, and this is working the best so far.
I think this right - unless you’re really, really good!
I’m just at the stage where I’m needing to think about alternate picking because what I’m playing is getting to the stage where trying to down pick everything is getting hard. It might only be a couple of notes in a riff that I alternate pick but I definitely need to be consistent about it and get my fingers used to following a pattern. I don’t really practice scales so I can’t comment on that
You’ve already gotten lots of good advice. A bit more about the specifics…
That note is a downbeat, so you play a down pick. And, yes, it does matter. If you want to play strict alternate picking, down picks on downbeats and up picks on the “ands”. This is what is generally recommended for folks just getting into single note stuff.
No, you don’t want to do this. A G note should be picked down or up depending on whether it falls on the beat or off the beat in the song you are playing.
This is not quite right either, though. Sometimes the first note picked is off the beat and should be picked up. You have to figure out where your riff or lick falls in the rhythm.
