Economy Picking

Author: Jimi Savage

What's Economy Picking?

"To get from one place to another with minimum effort!"

"Less movement, more reliability!"

"Saves time and effort!"

Economy picking is designed to increase ease of fluidity, speed and dexterity. Try to imagine as sweep picking scales! Some people play using economy picking naturally, you can find out for yourself if you are a natural economy picker or not by playing a scale that you know and watching your picking hand. If you pick every string when ascending through the scale with a down pick and each different string descending with an up stroke of the plectrum and using alternate picking with this technique then you are using economy picking.
The technique is used widely in Jazz and Fusion Rock, players such as Shawn Lane, Eric Johnson, Frank Gamble, Yngwie Malmsteen use this technique within their playing. It takes on average 20 years for one person to master economy, alternate & sweep picking. Economy picking sounds very smooth making the notes run into one another. A better flow sounding like liquid. Alternate picking adds a lot of aggression to the notes that are being played thus creating a clearer tone more that economy and sweep picking is the ultimate in smoothness as the motion is very fluid.

Using the Correct Fingering

It's very important at this stage to use the correct fingers to play the notes otherwise you will end up running out of finger positioning. A two-fingered pentatonic player hasn't got a chance for this technique. The finest/best players will always find the easiest way of playing something, so in this case use all of your fingers 25% each this way you spread the work load out. Keeping one finger to a certain fretboard position, when playing scales if any notes should exceed the position then decide which finger should play the note. In this case it should be the nearest finger to the note, if it's a series of notes then decide whether your fingers should change position for this.

Picking Directions

Economy picking is simple common sense of saving energy within your playing, but at the same time you are using lots of techniques, alternate picking plays a role in this and sweep picking is like a combination of the two. When deciding which way you should pick a series of notes phrase or lick it's important to plan your journey. This all sounds very difficult and too much to do just for a simple run or phrase but after a while this becomes a natural instinct and you will be starting with the correct picking direction and attacking with the correct movement, whether it be a combination of picking techniques. If you can pick using all techniques (alternate, economy, sweep, hybrid, finger style, etc) then you can truly master your picking.

Sweep Picking

The technique of sweep picking is to get from one point of the guitar strings to another as smoothly and as fluently as possible. Sweep picking is mainly used in arpeggio formations and the picking direction is simple. Imagine that you are dusting the strings with the plectrum but travelling from the 6th string to the 1st and back again. The technique must be a strum in slow motion making sure that you pick each string, try this by muting the strings with your fretboard hand and practice the sweep technique across the strings.

Muting

To mute with the right hand use the heel of your palm and the knife- edge of your palm. You can also use the thumb muscle area of your palm to mute the bass strings when playing the upper strings and also creating that muffled effect on bass tones from the guitar. The left and is a bit harder, when playing a note from a lick or a scale any fingers that are behind the note must rest on the adjacent strings or all the strings so no undertones or open strings are accidentally created when playing. Using both left and right hand muting techniques together takes a bit of time to master, this is why it's important to practise all licks, scales, arpeggios, etc, slowly before performing them at full speed. Clarity is very important in guitar playing.

The Triangle of Picking

There are three areas of picking that you must master at this level of guitar playing. These are alternate, economy and sweep picking. You wilt have to know and feel when to change to a certain picking technique. For example when playing using duplets (two's) or quadruplets (four's) you will mainly use alternate picking, when picking triplets, sextuplets, etc you may use economy picking and then for those flowing arpeggios sweep picking plays the major role. Practise a different technique each day.