PICKING LARGE INTERVALS

Welcome! To finish off our exploration of pick playing, we’re going to look at a couple of things related to playing bigger intervals. As we’ve noted before, every technique takes on a whole new level of difficulty when we start to move it across the strings, but it can get even harder when we want to be able to control how long each note lasts.

- Steve Lawson

To start with, we’re going to look at how to play open strings as a drone note underneath fretted notes higher up the neck. This is a technique that’s been used to great effect by a number of rock greats, including Doug Pinnick, Justin Chancellor, Julie Slick, and Jason Newsted. It can be a great way to keep the low-end present while also adding to the melody or harmony of the song in a more involved way.

Let’s start with some octave patterns using the open A string. Exercise 1 starts with just two eighth notes on the low A and the A at the 7th fret on the D string:

EXERCISE 1

I’ve notated the picking as all downstrokes, but there are a number of ways we can try this. For example, if you try the economy-picking idea from last month, you may find that you struggle to get much ‘drive’ out of the line. That’s certainly my experience, but it’s also worth experimenting with because the greater the number of ways you have to play any line, the richer the range of grooves you’ll have available to you when it comes to playing, writing, or improvising music. If you start on an upstroke with the pick, you can then play two consecutive down strokes, followed by two consecutive upstrokes. Please experiment, but definitely make sure you can play this consistently and with solid dynamics, using all downstrokes.

Another factor you might want to vary is the amount that each pair of notes gets to ring over the other two. Try it with both the low and high notes ringing, then try to mute either one to clean up the sound.