This is becoming a frustration now. Everything else just slowly gets better once you’ve practiced the concept enough to use it in your playing. Some things like barre chords I’ve done some extra exercises to clean up and that pays off.
But how you can strum, then cleanly pick out a riff / lead line and back intro strumming is beyond me. I’ve used Justin’s lesson, can do the exercise but when it comes to using it in songs I pick the wrong string constantly if I’m not looking.
I’ve studied good players and they all seem to strum with no anchoring of their hand, then instantly pick out notes flawlessly. I don’t understand how you can know where your hand is when it’s just been strumming and none of the exercises have helped.
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How long have you been learning? I’ve been doing this for almost 5 years, and I still have to look. I practice 30-45 minutes a day, 5-7 days a week.
I hope this information helps put things in perspective for you.
In my time learning this instrument, the one truth I’ve learned is that EVERYTHING takes longer to learn than I thought it would. 
Enjoy the journey! 
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This is a hard skill.
Esp if you’ve been used to wild strumming before hand and are only just combining the two
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One year, but (a lot) more hours daily than you. The thing is I normally look at a physical technique I want, let’s say a finger picking pattern, hit it hard day after day for a little while and I can do it from then on. This one I can’t see any method to make it happen. I can certainly see it taking many years to learn musicianship, tone, rhythm and feel. But the physical techniques should come in with repeated exercise.
I get what your saying. I excell fast in things like at this as well. But this one in particular is a super tough skill. Much harder than most other guitar skills. If you know the strumming pattern and the picking riff and you feel you should be able to pick it up, then my advice would be. Learn the count and write out the whole thing. Then set it to a metronome and start crazy slow, and I mean agonizing slow. Build it up until you can do it at the speed you want.
That will still take some time and dilligent practice. I have recently hit my wall where suddenly things are not coming as easy as the were for the last year. It can be frustrating and an eye opener. I am coming to terms with it my self, kicking and screaming. Keep working at it.
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Here are two things you can try. They each are focused on different skills but together they might help you get closer to your goal.
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Practice palm muting using the heel of your picking hand. Anytime I am picking notes in a riff or scales, I use the heel of my hand to mute any strings that are above where I am picking. This means that my hand is almost always resting lightly on the sixth and often the fifth string. This not only mutes unwanted string noise but also gives me a bit of a reference as to where my hand is and what string I am picking.
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Practice alternating picking the base note and then strumming the chords in a song. Start with a simple two chord song with four beats for each chord. For each measure, pluck the base note on Beats 1 and 3 and strum the whole chord on beats 2 and 4.
Neither one of these is the same as your goal of moving between a riff and strumming, but they can both help you get better at picking out notes and building confidence in hitting the right string. After practicing these you may find you have much better luck working directly on your goal.
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I would suggest that strumming followed by picking is about accuracy and that will take time. It’s going to be important not to rush it. Relax into it, and watch what you’re doing . If you make the same mistake every time then that’s what you have learned! Unlearning a mistake takes longer. So, slow right down on your strumming and transition cleanly but slowly to the picking. Don’t be tempted to go any faster until you can do it cleanly 10 times!
Use a metronome. It’s all about the muscle memory, so increase speed slowly - 10 times done right then increase a little and practice again.
I have a poster on my wall…
“Don’t practice until you get it RIGHT -
practice until you can’t get it WRONG!”
Good luck
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This is a spot on reply @Rider2040 Rob. I too am working on this skill and it is tough. I have a stubby pinky and when I try using it to anchor my position, my hand is cramped too close to the strings to play. Using the palm as a slight anchor and to mute when needed works better. But still, as with so many steps in learning this wonderful, frustrating instrument it comes down to:
- Do it slowly.
- Do it alot.
- Do it with a metronome.
- Speed up gradually until you get it right consistently.
Piece of cake, right?
You’re playing barre chords, and can strum, alternating with fingerpicking in exercises, but miss strings when you’re not looking?
You have high expectations of yourself, which is great for making progress, as long as you don’t get disheartened.
Give yourself a break…
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Good point. I guess it’s just when I can’t see a clear path to make something happen that I get disheartened. I’m fine if there’s a set process to follow e.g 1 minute changes for chords do that constantly and you will sort them out in no time.
Alex
I agree with Jason @Ontime: the clear path is the slow path. Go as slow as is necessary to play it correctly. Only then should you start to speed up, in very small increments, so that you’re practising perfect.
You will get there.
Brian
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Have you tried playing the last chord in the progression and then switching to the lead line.
And then just the end of the melody back to the first chord of the next progression.
Break things down into small chunks.
It might even be worth play last chord then first 2 bars of lead only. Then repeat at the other end, last 2 bars, first chord. Practice switching from chord to lead and from lead to chord.
Like an alternative 1MC !!
When you have that down try the last bar of the chord progression before switching or just 2 chords. Just get used to the process of switching from chords to lead and from lead to chords.
Slowly slowly catch 
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It’s normal to feel like that at some point in our journey, specially with intermediate techniques which are not that straight forward Personnally, I’ve been working on bending in tune technique for 6 months. For the first 3 months, I did not feel like making any progress. Then, I suddenly saw progress on the 4th month. And I’m probably at a plateau again, but will surely improve again sooner or later.
Though, at some point, I was putting too much focus on that technique. And it leads me to avoid the guitar as I got tired of always failing. So, I’d advice to keep practicing the technique, but at small dose, to make sure it does not suck your joy of playing.
Interesting topic, lots of good thoughts already. I would simply add that mixing in lead lines with strumming is very difficult. It’s an order of magnitude harder than, say, learning a barre chord, or how to hammer on (even harder then bending in tune, at least for me). I
They can do this because they have been working at it for hundreds (even thousands) of hours. It’s not something that you can get after doing some exercises for a few weeks.
Which lesson you are referring to here? My introduction to picking individual notes and strumming (way before the era of Justin) was picking out bass notes as part of a strumming pattern, country style (I’m not sure if Justin has a specific lesson on this). The idea is to do a strum pattern like D DU D DU, however for the D’s on beats 1 and 3 you just play a single bass note. The tab might look like this (2 bars of G, followed by a bar of C):
The next step was playing bass runs, i.e. a series of 2-4 notes on the lower strings to transition between chords (Justin does have a lesson on this: https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/how-to-link-guitar-chords-using-scales-bg-1504)
If you haven’t already, you might consider mastering these simpler techniques, before tackling the more advanced stuff that you seem to be having trouble with.
I believe this is covered in Justin’s Grade 2 course, specifically this lesson: https://justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/how-to-pick-individual-strings-while-strumming-bg-1703
The particular exercise that really helped me was to pick a chord shape, strum it D U D then pick individual strings 1 R 2 R 3 R 2 R 1 R 2 then D U, where R = Root (bass).
E.g. using a C chord:
Practice slowly, just with C for a while, then add other chords particularly D and E or G to cover all the low root note strings. You’ll get there.
I think this is slightly different to what the Op has been asking about. The lesson you quote is picking out individual notes “from the chord”. He is trying to switch from a chord progression to a lead line/phrase and back to the chord. A different kettle of fish.
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This exercise develops the foundation of complete picking hand independence, allowing you to pick any string you want whenever you want.
Granted, the fretting hand will still need to figure out what to do, and that may be their hangup, but if the picking hand is struggling, I stand by my suggestion. 
Edited to add that the exercise could also be easily adapted to toss in a basic lead lick instead of the chord notes, or even just playing the major scale in between strumming.
As noted already, it takes some work, which you have obviously done a far bit of already.
One suggestion that continues to work for me. Film yourself.
Analyse the footage and ascertain EXACTLY where it all falls apart, and what movement is involved. Be very, very specific. Eg. Is it more from strumming to picking, or back the orher way? How far away from the fretboard is the pick/ fingers just before the transition? Is the plane/angle too steep/ narrow? What’s the attack angle on the strings when you go for that first picked string? What does your actual picking look like? Is it more in and out, or are you ‘bouncing’ over the top of strings to get to others?
Ive found its not always immediately obvious, but it usualky becomes so after some detective work. And given you’ve been at it a while, it sounds more like a technical issue than a practice issue.
There are many little movements that make up a relatively complicated task like this. I have found the way forward is to find out what the problematic ones are and work on rectifying those, as opposed to always attacking it as a whole and hamnering away at endless ‘fuller’ repetitions.
Cheers, Shane
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Alex @Alrey87
Like you I am very much at an early stages of this. What I find is helping me to pick out individual notes is working on a large number of different practice exercises. Justin has some in classic course but plenty on line. When I concentrated on just a few I could do those but when tried something different the ability was not there. Like most things with guitar it take practice, some things come easier than others.
Michael