How to Do Country Guitar Picking Techniques

No matter what genre you're playing in, picking techniques are valuable ways to diversify your style. Country guitar uses certain picking techniques to create the sounds of country music genres including bluegrass and pop country. Guitar players find they get a better "range" of play when changing picking styles, and as in other genres, advanced picking helps county guitar players play more notes in quick succession.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Lose the pick. Although a guitar pick is great for producing clarity, it limits the quickness of your note sequence because other strings are muted when you're picking an note on a specific string. Get rid of the plastic pick and learn to use your fingers.
2. Get used to "dual" picking. The basis of a lot of advanced picking styles is the idea of using your thumb to pick notes lower on the guitar and your other fingers to play higher notes on higher strings. To start, play a low note and then follow up quickly with a higher note using your index finger.
3. Speed up. Keep alternating between your thumb and index finger to produce a fast two-note rhythm. Then practice changing fingering with your left hand to hear how your chord progressions can be picked using advanced two-finger picking.
4. Try chord picking. When you've mastered the two-finger, two-note sequence, try using your index and middle fingers to play multiple strings instead of just one. the resulting sound will be back and forth between one low note and a higher set of chord notes.
5. Progress to the "walking bass line." When you've got your picking style down, you can try a really hard picking style that will produce an authentic bluegrass sound. Try holding a chord fingering with your left hand, but changing the low note on the E or A string (with your left) while keeping up alternating picking with your right hand. You'll hear a static chord sound on top, with the bass note going up or down in sequence.