#104 - Best 5-Minute Picking Workout For Intermediate Players!

Hello Bernth, greating from Czechia, would be great to add backing track w/o guitar for training can I ask you to add that ? thank you Very much

Jarda Barta

hi bernth, can you please provide the backing tracks. or the midi files

Hello Carrel, thanks for asking - do you mean the scale used in this video or the scale/neck dimension of the guitar? :) Here are the specs of the AZ I'm currently using: https://www.ibanez.com/eu/products/detail/az2402_01.html

Bernd Brodträger

Hi Bernth what is the range ( scale) hello frome France !!

Hi Bernth. I'm new to your patreon. You have a lot of exercises that help, some of them i had them from my former guitar teacher. But the thing I struggle with is that, there are so many and I don't know how often to repeat practicing some of them, or to always practice a new exercise that you put out. My main problem is alternate picking on the first 2 strings since they are positioned the lowest on the fretboard. I've been playing for years but I still lack some skill. I'm one of the "learn scales up and down" guys because this is how my first teacher thought me without knowing how and what to study.

Bobei Alexandru

This excercise is killer! Just tried it and couldn't pick precise at 120 BPM. Now, after 2 Months of practice (at least 3 times a week) I'm at 150 BPM. And its getting better every week. Strongly recommended!

Yes :)

Anders Karlsson

Backing tracks to this exercise?

Hi, where can i find backing track without guitar?

Anders Karlsson

thanks for the reply. I still cant get my brain to wrap around that, for example when youve made youre way upto the a string the beat hits on the 5th note of the sequence. its too hard for my brain to hit a beat half way through a pattern. then the next beat on the low e string is on the 2nd note then the 6th. there must be some secret to counting them instead of having to learn it like a song and know exactly when the beats gunna hit on which note. Ive also noticed that when i go fast when i swap strings i always use an upstroke going up and a downstroke going down when swapping strings. not sure if this is a bad thing but its a habbit i cant get out of

HellsDemise

Hey man, I had the same problem as yours. But I found it helpful to think "two strings as a group". So basically if you mentally put the 14 notes together, that will take up 2 and a half beat, which is much easier to navigate than having a 7 note group ending at a quarter beat. This worked for me.

Hey new member here. First I'd just like to say thank you for uploading all of this awsome content. I can play along to your 120bpm video, but if I try to play on my own with a metronome I find it hard to get the timing down. In my head I know it's 7 notes per string and I know the pattern. Sometimes the metronome beats on the 2nd or 3rd note of the string which really makes it hard for me to time with the pattern in my mind. Is there a good way to count the 16th notes in your mind while thinking also of the 7 note patten of each string?

HellsDemise

I've been recovering from tendonitis from a couple of years back and I am surprised I was able to pull 120 bpm. This is a great exercise. Question though what's the speed on the second take? 160? or 180?

Tomas Hernandez

Thanks so much for sharing that, Paulo! I agree, playing/shredding on the higher strings is often harder since we spend so much time on the lower strings when we work out songs/riffs :) Whenever I encounter issues like that, I make it a priority to isolate these problem zones in the routine. So a particular string transition or string pair is causing your problems here, I'd recommend turning it into an exercise (making the original exercise smaller with focus on this issue). That mindest always really helped me! You can also check out #65, this one is about string skipping and this skill really helped me with string transitions in general: https://www.patreon.com/posts/65-shred-skill-34637088

Bernd Brodträger

Hi Bernth, greatings from Brazil. Happy to find your channel. I am having trouble doing the exercise from 140 bpm up the scale because the alternate picking fails on the D and B string ascending the scale. Is there any other exercise that can improve this issue???

Hey Randall, thanks a lot for letting me know! I want to forward issues like that to Patreon every time since I want this to work perfectly for all users :) Could you send me a message or reply here on what doesn't work for you? Can you download the files now or does it keep loading? Or is it an issue with opening/loading the files? Thanks so much for your feedback!

Bernd Brodträger

Hii Bernth I’m having a problem downloading the tabs

Randall Melendez

Hello Justin, thanks for the comment! That's a great question and it's honestly tough to remember the entire process of forming the technique over the years. But I do come from a place where I was constantly pushing myself, my hands were out of sync and I was just picking as fast as possible in the beginning - trying my best to just somehow keep up with my left hand! And that sounded pretty terrible :) So the left hand definitely caused more problems than the right hand when it comes to speed. I never sat down and played 5bpm faster every day/week, when it comes to the high speeds I just had to feel the motion - it was very sloppy in the beginning but over time I could adjust the technique through hand synchronization exercises! If you search for this topic here, you will find the workouts that helped me most concerning that :)

Bernd Brodträger

Hi Bernth, thanks again for all the hard work you do. I have a question, I have been practicing your stuff (been playing for almost 30 years) but it seems like there is an upper physiological barrier to how fast I can move my fingers on my left hand. Did you ever feel that barrier and just kept working to push through it?

Justin Wagner

Hey, thanks so much for the great question! I think it's a good idea to practice it at a level you are comfortable with, close to your current barrier (that's never a mistake in my opinion) - after that, you will see that it's difficult to just push the tempo by 5 bpm every day. I always felt like I need to feel and understand the fast motion, even if it's not synchronized or tight yet! So I just pushed to higher tempos, knowing that my technique isn't there yet. But I got a feeling for the motion and made small improvements and changes in every routine when I was pushing myself outside of my comfort zone :) This approach worked best for me so far since I never made the jump from slow/mid-tempo picking to the fast picking motion by just playing a bit faster every day! Hope that helps a bit, great that you are working on this exercise :)

Bernd Brodträger

I'm continuing to explore the possibilities of this exercise. It's fantastic! Starting with an up stroke vs. down stroke, starting from the 6th string rather than the 1st, playing the notes on each string ascending rather than descending, playing it as legato ascending and descending, and completely changing it up by using the same picking pattern but fretting different modal shapes. I could get lost in this for a long time lol

David W Harper

Hi Bernth - What is your opinion on the optimal approach to tempo increase? for instance, I I can play at 100 bpm, is it best to move in small steps - say 105, or push the limits and say go to 120? I have trouble finding that balance, as some part of the techniques involved begin to fall apart rather rapidly...for me. :) Thanks as always for you insight!

John H

Hey Tony, I agree! I also have a much harder time ascending - but it was mostly my head struggling with identifying and processing the groups, not so much the picking angle. I think a healthy amount of daily repetition will get you there :) It's always great to discover challenges like that, now you have the perfect workout to work on this!

Bernd Brodträger

Hey Cody, thanks for the comment! Most players here use the Guitar Pro software :) A free alternative to GP5 is Tuxguitar, here's the link: https://sourceforge.net/projects/tuxguitar/

Bernd Brodträger

Hey everyone! I'm new here. What program does everyone use for the GP5 files? I tried a free tab reader, but it's not very good. Any suggestions are appreciated!

I can do this picking exercise decently descending at 120bpm, but i fall apart ascending. Is there any trick behind improving ascending? Since there are 7 notes per string, pick slanting would be constantly changing (and i am not great at that in general yet), so i think my issue is that i am not as good at string hopping while ascending.

Tony Guertin

Great question! It's actually just the minor scale but it's descending chromatically with every repetition, that makes it sound more interesting I think :)

Bernd Brodträger

what's the scale of the whole exercise? It sounds like Baroque music

Hi Bernth! What a great exercise! I started at 50bpm, now i can play it at 70bpm. I bought both courses of you and I'm at step 1 of the first week. Fantastic, i love it. All. The courses and the patreon stuff

Wolfgang

@Fred; my english isn' t very good. Die negativen Kritiken sind, weil User die Tabs online stellen und oft Fehler dabei sind. Ich kenne das Programm auf Windows und Android. Gar nicht mehr wegzudenken. So viele Möglichkeiten. Eine gratis Alternative wäre TuxGuitar, zumindest auf Windows

Wolfgang

Great picking exercise. I do well descending or ascending but the transition from one to the other always trips me up. Especially with the metronome going....

Gary Beltrami

Hey Fred, sorry I've always used Windows :( Is the program Guitar Pro available in the App Store?

Bernd Brodträger

Awesome exercise! Would be cool if you would come up with a "hybrid picking primer"... Bars 14-15 are giving me headaches!!! Thanks for your great work.

Hey Simon, really great to hear that! This one is absolutely about precision and hand synchronization, not about the crazy high tempos :) Of course, I wanted to push it there once again - but it always depends if you actually need that for your music and if speed is necessary for you. So if you can play it clean and precise at these slower tempos you are doing a great job for sure!

Bernd Brodträger

My sweet spot is 50 and I did a 70 bpm of that exercise once. Am I still allowed to call myself a "BERNTH approved intermediate player"? That would boost my self-confidence :-D

Can you recommend an iPad App to open the gp5? Thanks!

Fred

Thank you ! :)

Definitely a good exercise!

Tom G

fabulous lesson ...thank you ...for me the mid tempo pfff

guido bossyns

Good lesson and a nice exercise to work on. I've got a long ways to go since I have to start a 70 bpm for my comfort speed.

Scott Walden

🎸🎶👍🤘

Bjørn Visser

he Bernd! I make very good progress with your powerful lessons!thank you!!

Michael Scharf

So cool, reminds me of a scale thing I used to play. Well between this on and a few other warm ups found here, I will be pro again in no time. Even though though things move a little slower now lol. Awesome lesson, ty Bernth.

Ian D Lyon

WOW.

Steve Shaw

Thank you as usual 😁

Paul Baglio

This is such a good lesson! Thank you!

David W Harper

This is what i need for daily practice as i only have a limited time to play. Thanks!