A Snow Shovel or
a Hair Dryer?
BY PAUL GILBERT
Paul Gilbert purposefully began playing guitar
at age 9, formed the guitar-driven bands Racer
X and Mr. Big, and then accidentally had a No.
1 hit with an acoustic song called “To Be with
You.” Paul began teaching at GIT at the age of
18, has released countless albums and guitar
instructional DVDs, and will be remembered as
“the guy who got the drill stuck in his hair.” For
more information, visit paulgilbert.com
CHOPS: Intermediate
THEORY: Beginner
LESSON OVERVIEW:
• Understand when to use
economy picking and when to
use alternate picking.
• Learn how to switch
between different alternate-picking patterns.
• Combine percussive “unwanted”
notes with economy picking to
create ghost note patterns.
Which is better, a fork or a spoon? A pair of scissors or a roll of duct tape?
A snow shovel or a hair dryer? My answer,
which I hope you’ve already guessed, is “It
depends on what you’re trying to do.”
All too often, I’m asked, “Which is bet-
ter, alternate picking or economy picking?”
My answer is the same as the snow shovel
versus the hair dryer: It depends on what
you’re trying to do.
At first glance, these picking styles
appear to be attacking the same problem—
how to get your pick from one string to
the next. But in the context of a complete
phrase and its particular fingering patterns,
one technique does often work better than
the other. But that’s just for that phrase.
Another one might come along and require
something completely different.
Lately, I’ve been working on improvising
over a I–IV progression. You can find this
kind of groove and chord progression in
songs like “Feelin’ Alright” by Joe Cocker or
“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by
The Rolling Stones.
Let’s start with Fig. 1, which is a rhythm
guitar pattern that gives us the basic sound
of the I–IV progression.
I found a three-note solo pattern that I
like to loop over each chord. I tried both
alternate and economy picking for this pattern, and I picked the snow shovel—I mean
alternate picking. But even armed with this
technique, I am faced with a challenge.
Because it’s a three-note phrase (picked
down-up-down), the next “loop” of the
phrase requires the whole pattern to reverse
(up-down-up). This entire time, the left
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