Guitar Economy Picking With The Little Lamb

Economy picking is simply playing the guitar in an "economical" sense. In layman's terms, this means using less picking hand movements in order to play much faster on the guitar. Some people may mistake alternate picking as economy picking. These 2 techniques are slightly different in nature and will be explained in the video below.

In this video lesson, we take the melody of Mary had a little lamb and apply economy picking to playing this evergreen childhood song. It is very interesting to see how Emil Werstler transform the melody into a very interesting fluid melody.

After learning the metal version of Mary Had A Little Lamb, you could use this similar knowledge and apply it to other nursery rhythmes or popular childhood songs that you know of. The idea here is to add a twist to the usual melody that is heard.

While economy picking is not an easy to pick up, there are several key pointers that can help you excel in this technique.

- Remember that your picking motion should make the best "economic" sense. You should think of ways to minimize motion of your picking hand while playing notes in a fluid motion.

- When playing arpeggios with the economy picking technique, the shape of the fretting hand could sometimes be difficult to follow through in one motion. When this happens, you might want to consider using your index finger in a rocking motion that enables you to fret and mute different strings at the same time.

p.s. You might want to bookmark the easy guitar songs for beginners section regularly for updates on videos that help you learn playing the guitar.