IntellectualMusician.com

I’ve found that most guitarists underestimate the effect their right hand technique can have on their playing. When the average guitarist sits down for a couple of hours to practice, I imagine that he/she doesn’t spend 2 minutes thinking about what their right hand is doing. It just goes on auto-pilot. You hold the pick between your thumb and first finger, but what about those other three fingers on the right hand? They just sit there and don’t get to have any fun. The solution to this situation is “Hybrid Picking”.

Hybrid picking takes the best of the picking world and mixes it with the best of the fingerstyle world. Hybrid picking will allow you to play things that you wouldn’t have thought of and wouldn’t have been able to do without it. Whether it’s incorporating unusually large interval and string leaps into a solo, utilizing diads and spread triads more freely without having to worry about the wrong strings ringing, playing more interesting broken chord patterns, or playing sweep-like arpeggios without bothering to spend hours trying to coordinate sweeps, hybrid picking will add interest to your sounds.

Essentialy, the idea is: pick a few notes with your pick, and when possible or desired pick the rest of the notes with your second and third finger, or, if your really wild, with your pinky.

EXAMPLE #1 Diads made easy

Lets start with a relitively easy example of using Hybrid picking diad shapes. This is really useful in Country, Blues, Afropop, etc.

Pick the bottom note of each diad, and with your 2nd finger fingerpick the top note. Doing this prevents the issue of the inner string inadvertently ringing.

Example #2- Large Interval Leaps

Another thing hybrid picking can let you do is to incorporate large string and interval leaps into a solo that would be very difficult, if not impossible, using alternate picking. I use this all of the time. I usually use my second finger for this type of playing and hammer-on or pull-off when possible after plucking with the second finger. I’m using the traditional right-hand pima notation system, except p will represent pick + first finger, the other letters will remain in the traditional way.

EXAMPLE #3 Broken Chord Patterns

You can also use hybrid picking to play difficult broken chord patterns that would otherwise be hard to pick each note of individually. This example is very similar stylistically to the song “Sira Bulu” by the great African singer songwriter, Habib Koite. This can be done without hybrid picking but I just find it to be a convenience.

EXAMPLE #4- Phony Sweep Runs

The last use for hybrid picking I will discuss is an alternative to sweep picking. You can use your picking finger, second finger, and third finger in that order to create 3 note sweeps. I have found this especially useful in solo passages. You can’t really use this the same way you would use sweep picking, but it will sound good in a nice solo run. This example is swung and is sort of a jazzy lick. You could sweep this or alternate pick it, but I find this to be the easiest way.

There are dozens of other uses for this technique in soloing, chord playing, and rhythm playing in any style. It will take time to develop but soon you will use it without thinking. I tell everyone it is the secret to my playing.

more articles by Alex Baboian

• Want to Make Your Solos Sound “Out”? Whole Tones Can Help!