Picking Guitar Lessons

Hybrid picking sounds super complicated, but it’s actually quite easy to pick up. In this lesson I break this technique down to teach you everything you need to know so you can start incorporating it into your playing – today!

We’ll start with the basics – what exactly is hybrid picking and how do you pull it off? I’ll show you why this is such a cool technique, how to practice it effectively, when to use it and which tones it works best with. Even if you’ve never tried it before, by the end of this lesson you’ll be able to start using hybrid picking in your playing.

This question comes from Liam who is having some trouble with alternate picking runs. He’s fine going from the high to low strings, but changing direction seems to require a great deal more concentration and is causing him to trip up. This is a tough problem and I totally understand the frustration, but I do have a solution!

Today we’re going to check out a picking question from School of McRock member James. He seems to be struggling when it comes to picking speed to let’s see what suggestions we can come up with!

Today I wanted to show you how I like to use .8th pattern delays to create really interesting sounding licks.

There’s actually quite a lot of work that goes into making this effect sound great such as way you approach your picking, how you’re muting, your left hand work and more… let me break it down for you!

In this lesson, I’m going to break down the main solo from my track Storms. It involves a lot of melodic playing that relies heavily on phrasing, vibrato and slides before kicking into a frantic flurry of pentatonic picking.

I’ll be taking you through the solo nice and slowly, going over things line by line and pointing out all of the little moves and techniques that you’ll need to absolutely nail this solo and take away several tips and tricks that you can apply to your own playing.

In this lesson, we’re going to be working on finger strength and dexterity – two very important areas for any guitarist – using a range of practical and fun approaches.

Whilst we walk through these different playing styles I’ll also be dropping in some of my top tips related to fingering and hand positioning to help improve your overall technique.

Have you ever looked down at your right hand when you’re picking and noticed how much it’s bobbing up and down? If so, it might be time to learn about pick slanting – a subtle technique that helps you cross strings really smoothly when alternate picking, even at crazy fast speeds.

In this lesson, we’re going to dive deeply into all of the mechanics around pick slanting using a bunch of cool licks and patterns that will help you improve your technique and sound awesome while you’re doing it.

In this very special lesson, we’re going to dive into the world of rockabilly, which is always such a fun style of guitar to play no matter what genre you’re into!

I’m going to show you a few of the licks and approaches that are close to my heart and have stuck with me from the jam sessions I had with my old guitar teacher “Wild Bill” so many years ago.

In this lesson I break down a diminished lick which makes heavy use of economy picking.

As well as breaking down the lick I also explain why I chose to use economy picking to play it, and how much easier it is to play the lick at speed by using this technique. I even demonstrate just how much more difficult it would be to attempt this lick without economy picking (it’s tough!) and I’ve included some cool exercises to help improve your economy picking chops.

During the McRocklin & Hutch track “You and Me” Thomas and I trade guitar solos back and forwards – in this lesson I’m going to break down the first solo from that exchange.

This solo strings together multiple techniques such as pick slanting, arpeggios, tapping, cross picking and hammer ons out of nowhere so there’s a lot to learn! To make things easier I break the solo down into 6 short sections so you can learn a piece at a time in just a few minutes.