The other side of the coin (part 1)

Hi !

Today I’m sharing ideas on right hand picking after having numerous bad experiences a long time ago.

Imagine the situation: you’re a sideman, you got the gig, playing in a band in a cool venue. 
For 10 songs, your job is just to groove hard on chords, play a few lead licks sometimes but no real guitar solo on the horizon.
On the 11th song, then comes the 24 bar-guitar solo where everyone is excited (including you) and expecting you to burn, to be up to the great guitar player they all know.

Unfortunately, even if you spent hours practicing awesome licks, crazy shreddy alternate picking lines, soulful blues bends, elaborate bebop lines : all this background is destroyed by the funky hour you just spent playing rhythms with downstrokes, more focussed on groove than the subtleties of picking. Your right-hand is unbalanced, sort of attracted by a mysterious force towards the ground, on which you keep on desperately looking at, since you’re too ashamed of yourself playing like crap. 

What the hell is going on? Even if you’re trying hard to ignore this unbalance, everything you’re playing is not like what you’re usually practicing. You’re not confortable, sort of caught off guard by the situation whereas you know you’re a decent badass six-stringer.

Sounds familiar ? 

I’ve lived these moments, so I had to work on a territory I rarely used to go: the upstrokes.
Since playing downstrokes on the beats is natural, we guitar players tend to feel/think that upstrokes are less important or even not natural.

Here’s what I've noticed: 

• If I want to play better on what I know and usually do, I must work hard on what I rarely do.
• The more prepared and confortable with upstrokes I am, the more efficient I am in solos.
• If downstrokes are easy, natural and into the light, they can only shine if what is in the shade (upstrokes) are clean and strong.
• Right-hand picking is like a coin. One side is a downstroke, one side is an upstroke. Each side is as important as the other: If I want to improve, I have to work in both territories and leave no stone unturned.

Here are a few exercices I like to practice when I’m preparing for a gig, a recording session or any other guitar situation.

( Fig. 1 ) is a 5-note chromatic line played on even rhythms. Downstrokes and upstrokes are exaggerated with accents. Each accent is deliberately placed on a specific note in the 5-note line.
bar 1: accent on 1
bar 2: accent on 2
bar 3: accent on 3,
etc….
The purpose is to flush the crazy idea that all accents must be on downstrokes, to have more control on the music you play with your pick, to feel the independence of the upstroke from the downstroke.

( Fig. 2 ) is the G major scale we all know, played differently. It starts with an upstroke instead of a downstroke. After a few minutes you’re confortable with changing strings with an up-down right hand movement. You feel that your pick is "inside" the strings, your right-hand picking is more accurate.

( Fig. 3 ) is based on a G Maj7#5 arpeggio. I’ve seen John McLaughlin warming up playing strict alternate picking on triads. I’ve humbly practiced this approach and came up with my own stuff. Like ( Fig. 2 ), the cool thing is to reverse what we already know: upstrokes are played on beats, instead of downstrokes. For jazz lovers, note the substitution on B7 ( = GMaj7#5/9) then D#min7b5 ( = GMaj7#5/9/#11) in bar 8.

( Fig 4. ) is G major scale played in triads. Every group of 4 notes starts with an upstroke for all the good reasons I’ve developed before. The nice thing is the mix the accent-thing of ( Fig. 1 ) with a triad approach. In this exercice the accent is displaced: on the first note, then the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, the back to the 1st note, etc….


Have fun ! 

Jean-François

www.soubelet.com