Is that a bad technique when learning. Cuz you are alternate picking, arnt you, i mean you are hitting each string moving the pick in opposite directions and you are playing by the economy principle of least effort when playing. But somehow it looks bad to me. From the learning point of view, is it better to pick those two contiguous strings by alternatively placing the pick on the outside of each string then pick like:

Pick >|  |< Pick

instead of

| <Pick> |

 

Is this relevant at all or just nonsensical.

There are a lot of opinions on what is acceptable when it comes to picking

In the end, its whatever is most efficient for you, in a specific situation, while you are playing

What you are mentioning doesn't seem very practical because it implies you are starting in a position between the 2 strings and never leaving that position. Unless you are playing a song where you are only picking 2 strings, I can't see this ever being applied... and even then, you aren't really picking the string if you never move past the inner edge of the string. I mean, if you're playing hi gain it doesn't take much to get the string to ring out, but actually proper but precise picking makes a huge difference the sound of the note you are playing. I don't think this method you are mentioning would produce a proper tone, unless you're going for whatever specific sound it produces

What you are describing is called inside picking, a specific form of alternate picking.

 

Paul Davids talks about it in this video for the Snow Hey Oh riff. It requires more precision and nuance than regular alternate picking but in theory you can alternate pick faster using this technique.

 

However, I think it would be best for someone learning guitar to seperate these techniques. This is not a substitute for regular alternate picking, it should only be used when necessary due to the increased precision. Regular alternate picking is more useful to get in your muscle memory because you can skip strings while using it, this technique can only be done with two adjacent strings and most of the time will be unneccessary - stick to normal alternate picking.

 

Hope I answered your question 🙂

On 6/6/2022 at 3:07 AM, Overpopulation said:

Is that a bad technique when learning.

Not at all 🙂

What you described with those little pictures are usually called 'outside picking' vs 'inside picking'. When used on a long sequence of notes between the same two strings, the two techniques aren't really different in terms of economy of movements, you're in both cases pretty much drawing the same 8-shaped trajectory.

Usually, when learning the general alternate picking technique on the guitar, you try to keep alternating downpick/uppick everywhere at all costs, and this results in some outside picking and some inside picking when moving to a different string, depending on whether the last note on the current string is a downpick or uppick. The benefit of alternate picking is that the right hand movement is rather automatic so no need to think much about it.

But back to the case when you have a long sequence between the same two strings, the choice is yours, depending on what feels most comfortable to you while delivering the result you want, each song specifically.