Guitar Picking Exercises Part 3 – String Skipping

In today’s guitar picking exercise you’re going to practice skipping over strings as you alternate pick.

The exercise is shown in the tab below with open strings. You can of course combine the picking pattern with a scale pattern or a chord to create some more challenges for yourself.

Pick each pair of strings four times – down, up, down, up – before you move on to the next pair. When you reach the first string and then start to move back up the strings begin with a down stroke on the second string.

Notice that when you move up from the high to low strings you pick the higher note of each string pair on a down stroke and the lower note on an up stroke. This is the opposite of what you did as you work down the strings. The pick stroke symbols on the tab should help to remind you of this.

In the next part of the series we're going to look at some more complicated exercises to give your picking skills a good workout. Click here to sign up for free and be notified by email when more lessons are published.

Update: Now you can read and try these other parts of the series...

Guitar Picking Exercises Part 4 – Alternate Across The Fretboard
Guitar Picking Exercises Part 2 – Adjacent Strings Guitar Picking Exercises Part 1 - Alternate Picking