Nowadays, the most common limiting factor for almost every guitar player is their picking hand. What happens is once they develop a certain picking style and get habituated to it they find it extremely difficult to change, and many a time to do so a retraining is needed. This only ends up preventing such people from playing guitar perfectly. But what if you get to learn a few methods to better your picking technique in far less time than you can ever imagine? Well, it is true that there indeed are many ways to help develop your picking accuracy, and we shall get to learn about three of them right away..    

First Step - Practicing Tremolo

In this step, you need to practice alternate picking, which means picking up, down, up, down, and so on. What you need to develop at this stage is a feel for your guitar strings and for that you need to practice really slowly. You should use a medium – heavy pick. You can practice this tremolo picking session while watching TV, and in fact, this is the perfect way to do so.  

Second Step - Practice In Front of the Mirror

To improve your picking accuracy, the next thing you need to do is practice playing right in front of any mirror. The focus of the mirror should be on the picking hand. You should not look at your hand but look at the mirror. Now, select any number you want to between one and six. Next, look at the reflection of your picking hand as shown in the mirror and begin playing any string you wish to. You need to practice this very slowly because the aim here is to make a clear image in your mind of which string is located where. Once you get accurate, gaining speed will not be a problem.  

Third Step - Target Practicing

This variation of the mirror practice is the last step you need to follow. When you will be able to complete this exercise/step precisely you will not have to look at your guitar for finding the strings ever. The steps in this stage are as follows: · Do not look at the strings but straight ahead · Select any number you want to between one and six · Try locating this string while not looking at your guitar. · Initially, you probably will not be able to identify the string with the sound it produced. So you can play each string one by one and then check which one you played. For this, you just need to place your picking hand on every string until you locate the vibrating one. If you wanted to play the second string but accidentally played the fourth one then you know you need to adjust your target string in your mind properly. · Once you learn the trick of playing your desired string without even looking at your playing hand, you now must play the same correct string twice, then thrice, and up to ten times, each time correctly that too without looking.  

Final Thoughts ...

Just follow these three simple steps for some days and you will be glad to see how beautifully your guitar picking accuracy improves.    

Your Turn to Sound Off!

How do you improve your picking accuracy?

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