Economy Picking – Student Spotlight – Vijay

In this Student Spotlight lesson, I will help Vijay overcome some of his difficulties with economy picking.

Economy picking can be looked at as a combination of alternate picking and sweep picking. The two very different feels those techniques have can make economy picking feel very awkward.

In this lesson I will demonstrate to Vijay some ways of approaching economy picking that will make it much easier. The most important concept here is the use of the thumb and pick in the picking motion. That will of course require Vijay to hold the pick in a more traditional way (using his index finger and thumb), so that he can have more control over the picking.

Then, when crossing strings, he can use a very small circular motion of the pick created with the index finger and thumb to help facilitatate the string crossing. You will see that this is usually a major component of great economy picker's playing. They seem to do most of the picking motion from the thumb and index finger when doing the small sweep across strings instead of the wrist or forearm.

A lot of these players did it intuitively by paying close attention to what the pick felt like while crossing strings. However, after you are aware of the technique, hopefully you will be able to incorporate it to help your own playing as well.

Good luck Vijay!

If you would like to submit a video question for this YouTube series, please do so on the Student Spotlight page.

Thanks! Carl...

Economy Picking - Vijay - Student Spotlight

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