How to use economy picking: a beginner's guide to an expert technique

Frank Gambale
Frank Gambale is a master of economy picking as evidenced on 1986’s Brave New Guitar (Image credit: Andrew Lepley / Getty)

Welcome to the first lesson in my economy picking series for GT. This lesson will help you understand the principles of economy picking and give you a practice routine for development. As the name suggests, economy picking is a system for increasing picking efficiency by making the most of directional motions between strings.

Economy picking differs from alternate picking in the way string changes are handled. Alternate picking uses opposing motions, where the pick stroke that completes one string in a stream of notes will be opposite to the pick stroke that begins the next string. 

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