Metal For Breakfast - Volume 1
by Jeff Liboiron

Hey guys, and welcome to Metal For Breakfast, Volume 1. In this lesson I will be discussing on how to develop your picking technique, as I know a lot of you have been talking about it, and I know a few guitar players personally who just can’t seem to develop their picking at all because of bad habits and bad technique.

This first picking lesson will hopefully help you get a head start in your picking.

The following will consist of some picking shapes or patterns. We won’t worry about putting them into actual music right now, just get your coordination between your picking and fretting hand down.

Before I start, here are some tips to remember when practicing:

1:) Always start slow, and then speed it up….ALWAYS. Accuracy is a byproduct of speed.

2.) Practice all the time

3.) Play these types of licks clean and with distortion. This is important because if you use distortion all the time, it can mask how the lick actually sounds, but if you play it clean, you can hear your mistakes. The reason you must also practice these with distortion though, is that you must practice your muting technique to avoid excess string noise.

4.) Record yourself playing because sometimes when you are practicing, you don’t get a sense of what the “audience” will hear sometimes, so record yourself on whatever you have, and listen to it and critique it to the best of your ability.
Ok, so lets get started. You can play these patterns using alternate picking or economy picking. It does not matter. (I myself am an economy picker).

|--*--|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|-----|-----| -1st string
|--*--|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|-----|-----|
|--*--|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|-----|-----|
|--*--|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|-----|-----|
|--*--|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|-----|-----|
|--*--|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|-----|-----| -6th string
   1     2           4

This is a pattern using fingers 1,2,4

|--*--|-----|--*--|--*--|-----|-----|-----| -1st string
|--*--|-----|--*--|--*--|-----|-----|-----|
|--*--|-----|--*--|--*--|-----|-----|-----|
|--*--|-----|--*--|--*--|-----|-----|-----|
|--*--|-----|--*--|--*--|-----|-----|-----|
|--*--|-----|--*--|--*--|-----|-----|-----| -6th string
   1           3     4

This is a pattern using fingers 1,3,4

|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|-----| -1st string
|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|-----|
|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|-----|
|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|-----|
|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|-----|
|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|--*--|-----|-----| -6th string
   1           3           4

This is a pattern using fingers 1,3,4 (if you prefer
to use your middle finger for whole steps, that’s cool)

Ok, so the above patterns I use all the time, and so do pretty much all other shred heads (petrucci, gilbert, malmsteen, etc.). There are other patterns that I will show later, but that is enough for you to practice for now. Don’t forget that you can use these patterns anywhere on the neck in any combination on any string.

So now what I’m gonna do, is put these patterns into use by giving you actual licks. Remember…I am not putting these into actual music for you yet.

Page 2, Licks 1 & 2

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