Music

Guitar Lesson 2: Hybrid Picking

In my opinion, hybrid picking is one of the most important techniques you can add to your playing abilities. It’s versatile and extremely helpful for difficult parts. Besides, I watch people shred and they’re holding onto the pick with all their fingers when they could be using those fingers to their advantage. Oh well.

For those of you who don’t know, hybrid picking is a mixture of holding your pick like normal and using the other fingers on your right hand to play other strings. There are people like Chet Atkins and Merle Travis who used a thumbpick to do walking basslines on top of melodies and chords played with the other fingers. Then there are people like Steve Howe and Tommy Emmanuel (though Tommy uses all sorts of different picks and picking techniques) who will do a lot of playing in the style of Chet or Merle by utilizing hybrid picking. The cool thing about hybrid picking is that it’s not limited to country-style music or chickin’-pickin’; you can use hybrid picking in all manners of styles of music. Later, I’ll have a lesson that will show how to use hybrid picking in rock and fusion contexts.

Let’s get started with some actual playing!

Hybrid Picking Exercise #1

One of my favorite guitar pieces to play is The Industrial Strength Hoedown Extravaganza by Jon Finn. I can’t play the whole thing, and what I can play isn’t so great, but it’s a lot of fun nevertheless. There’s a great chickin’-pickin’ section near the end of the song and there are two runs I’m going to use for the exercises in this lesson. Here’s the first one:

       m  m
       i  i   p   p   i p i p i      i      p  i       i
     |---------------------------------------------------------
     |-------------------------------------------------10h12---
  4  |-7--5h6------------------------9h11p9----9h10s11---------
  4  |-7--5---7p5-----7---9---7h9s11--------11-----------------
     |------------7s9---9---9----------------------------------
     |---------------------------------------------------------

         * pre-bend this note
         i        p
     ----------------|
     -12b13r12p10----|
     -------------11-|
     ----------------|
     ----------------|
     ----------------|

In this video, I play the exercise four times: once with pick only, once using hybrid picking, once with fingers only, and once much faster with fingers only.

The run above starts on beat 2 and every note is a 16th note except for the first note, which is an eighth note. It’s a wonderful line to play and just kind of slides into place with your fingers. There’s no use of the left-hand pinky for those of you afraid to play with that finger. Double bonus.

For those of you who don’t know what p, i, and m mean above the tablature notation, p stands for thumb, i stands for index, and m stands for middle. The letter a stands for ring finger, but we’re not using that yet.

There are three ways to play this one: using a pick with standard alternate picking, using a pick and playing with hybrid picking, or using your fingers. If you’re going to learn the whole song, you’re going to need a pick, but if you’re going to limit yourself to learning the lick for the sake of the lesson, then try it with your fingers, too. It’ll be good for you.

If you’re doing hybrid picking, use the pick where it says ‘p’, use your middle finger where it says ‘i’, and use your ring finger where it says ‘m’.

This is a good run to practice and see how fast you can play it. With a fast neck, you’ll probably surprise yourself. This is one of those runs that’s really well-architected for guitar players. After you get the hang of this one, check out the next exercise, which is a little bit harder.

Exercise 2, dangit!

        *prebend note
         i     p i p   p i p i   p   p   i p i p i      i
     |---------------------------------------------------------
     |-7b8r7p5---5---------------------------------------------------
  4  |---------7---7p5---7---5h6------------------------9h11p9-
  4  |-----------------7---7-----7p5-----7---9---7h9s11-----------
     |-------------------------------7s9---9---9---------------
     |---------------------------------------------------------

      p  i       i
     ----------------|
     ------------10--|
     ----9h10s11-----|
     -11-------------|
     ----------------|
     ----------------|

In this video, I play the exercise four times: once with pick only, once using hybrid picking, once with fingers only, and once much faster with fingers only.

This one is pretty similar to Exercise 1, but the variations make it more difficult. You might find that these exercises are easier using only your fingers. I’m not quite sure what makes this one more difficult with the hybrid picking other than the thought that it’s harder to squeeze your middle finger in under the pick to do the hybrid stuff. You might find it easy. What do I know?

“Homework”

There really is no exercise 3; this video is just the first exercise, second exercise, and what Jon plays between them in the real song. It’s done entirely fingerstyle at somewhere around the real recording’s tempo.

Try taking the techniques learned above and applying them to music you already play. Also, try playing through some scales using hybrid picking to play triads, moving up the neck through all the chords in the standard ionian scale. For instance, play triads with some form of hybrid picking with the following chords: E, F#m, G#m, A, B, C#m, D#dim, E.