The World’s Greatest Hybrid Picking Guitar Lesson Pt.1


In this free video guitar lesson we will begin our complete look at hybrid picking.

Hybrid picking is the technique of using your pick with your picking hand fingers at the same time.

Hybrid picking is used by a HUGE number of players is every conceivable style. You have everyone from Albert Lee, Steve Morse, Eric Johnson to Brad Paisley. The list just goes on and on. It is an absolutely essential guitar technique to have nailed.

In this lesson series I have kinda re-arranged Mauro Giuliani's "120 Daily Right Hand Studies" to be played with hybrid picking. The Giuliani studies have been used for 200 years by classical guitar players to develop their flawless right hand technique.

So I have re-arranged those same studies for all of us hybrid pickers and the results have been phenomenal with all of my students.

Start with these six basic exercises. They will progressively get more difficult each lesson. In the end you will have a fantastic practice routine for hybrid picking that will enable you to hybrid pick virtually anything you can come up with.

Grab the PDF TAB download for this lesson here.

Hybrid Picking Patterns Pt.1 TAB PDF

Have Fun!! More exercises are coming soon!!

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Hybrid Picking Patterns Pt.1

13 Comments

  1. lucianoverghini on August 12, 2010 at 11:24 pm

    this lesson is an absolute jem, thank you i have wated to improve my hybrid picking for a while now and this is just the ticket, im looking forward to the next one!!!

    • Carl Brown on August 15, 2010 at 5:19 pm

      Hey thanks a lot, the next one will be up soon!! Cheers!! Carl.. 😀

  2. GlennO on August 22, 2010 at 6:57 pm

    I love this lesson. It couldn’t be more appropriate for me, and I’m sure many others. Thanks, Carl

  3. jayanth kumar ogirala on September 12, 2010 at 3:48 am

    I love this lesson. Nice. thanks, Carl Sir.

  4. Dakota on January 1, 2011 at 3:27 pm

    Is it ok if I anchor my pinky?

    Thanks,
    Dakota

    • Carl Brown on January 1, 2011 at 11:13 pm

      I think it is fine if it is comfortable to you. There are quite a few guitar legends that anchor all the time. Just make sure that you are anchoring to relax your hand, not to create more tension in it. 🙂

      Obviously, you won’t be able to hybrid pick with your pinky if your entire hybrid technique is balanced by your pinky being planted. Perhaps you can use the pinky from time to time but for the most part keep it planted for stability purposes.

      Carl..

  5. Eason on April 10, 2011 at 1:44 am

    Do you have your finger nails grown out on pick hand? Do you think it would be important to grow them out for hybrid on a classical guitar?

    • Carl Brown on April 12, 2011 at 11:05 pm

      Hey there, yes I do have my nails grown slightly out on my picking hand to facilitate hybrid picking stuff. I got used to this from my days as a classical guitarist. I would say 99% of classical guitarist’s grow there picking hand nails out at least a little bit, some to quite long lengths. It really just depends on the sound that you are going for and the natural shape of your fingertips. Everyone is different of course. But if you want to play classical I would say definitely experiment with different nail lengths on your picking hand. Also, make sure you learn how to properly shape and buff the tips of your nails because that can make all the difference in the world. 😀

      Carl..

  6. Eason on April 15, 2011 at 10:07 pm

    whats your opinion on some of the fake nails that you can glue on? Thanks alot

    • Carl Brown on April 16, 2011 at 4:36 pm

      A lot of famous classical guitarists use them and seem to do well with them. Some people just don’t have strong enough nails to do otherwise. I once had a classical guitar teacher that had nails that curved inward really bad and he had to take a hot spoon and bend his nails back into a nice playing shape about once a week. OUCH!!

      On a side note, some of the students and teachers at my conservatory would just cut up a white ping pong ball and super glue a piece of it to their nail then shape it. They said that a ping pong ball shell feels, acts and sounds more like a natural nail in there opinion. Gotta be careful with the glue though. They have probably come up with better nail substitutes since then but I haven’t been in the classical guitar area in so long I have lost touch with what they are doing these days.

      Hope this helps!!

      Carl..

      • Steve on July 17, 2022 at 3:00 pm

        No Carl,
        They haven’t buddy. Ping balls are nitrocellulose the same stuff early plectrums were made of, and even the cheap plastic ping balls are not to bad as the plastic is designed to respond in the same manor as Keratin (but use the nitrocellulose ones.
        The trick too is to let your own nails growth out a bit and glue under the nail with the same acrylate glue in the nylon chiquita’s fashion nail kits as its far less toxic and optimal for gluing organic substances; even used for suturing wounds.
        Trim them to fit with curved and straight nail scissors and and leave the tip a bit long for filing to shape.Make them in advance and bulk and remember each finger is different lol; I have a little kit with nails made for each finger, medicine bottle full of bicarb and manicure set for the purpose. Do it while you watch the idiot box or listen to the radio. You can get them to fit perfectly quite easily.
        Just be careful not to push too hard up under the nail as this can be uncomfortable.
        Once glued and crimped with long nose pliers or the like to make sure it seats well and allowed to cure which is not very long, then use sodium bicarbonate to dismiss the ledge join between the nail and the ping pong expedient with a paddle pop stick and carefully drip more acylate on this and it goes off like cement almost immediately. It can get quite hot though so be warned. It has never been unbearable for me but have a glass of water ready just in case (as this will not adversely affect the bond as once its hot it’s stone and water helps cure acrylates)
        Done this way with clean fingers I get 2 weeks at least bathing and usually manual operations of life and they are superb. Far better for a natural feel apoyando and tirando than on the upper face of the nail.

  7. dave on February 17, 2012 at 5:04 pm

    carl. been doing the exercises. great. I’ve been away from the guitar for decades. It seems like tab scripts are everywhere and back then you’d learn to read music. has this become a trend or did I just miss all the tabs back in the 70’s? (I love the tabs by the way.)
    thanks

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