Paul Gilbert Guest Lesson - Picking (TG236)

Über-shred lord Paul Gilbert delivers the ultimate guitar lesson on picking, string muting, rhythmic phrasing and arpeggios

[Quicksilver_Cookie]

Even when he's teaching you, he makes you feel like his good buddy. I love this guy.

[ripper]

this guy is so down on earth.. you gotta love him 

[rubendez]

the mark of a true teacher, recognizing ones own errors

[dynomike]

Paul, I learned how to alternate pick from your first instructional video, and YOU NEVER FAILED ME...

[MrKittles]

This makes me feel so much better. Been struggling for 6 years to play that damn fast lick of his! It's nice to know other people have had a similar struggle in a sense lol even ol Paul!

[JAMEYSIMMS]

He's my favorite guitar teacher on the net. Thank you, Paul!

[Grumplefut]

I have advanced my guitar playing the most with Paul gilbert's lessons through the years. He is just a great teacher and really shows a large effort to share his knowledge.

[jazzdarkside]

I like how he tries to explain what outside picking is with his head.

[billydaug]

This guy has a real honest down to earth teaching technique. I like his videos a lot

[NullGamingXYZ]

If you really wanna know why PG's picking is god tier it's because he spent something like the first 2 years of his playing only using upstrokes as a mistake. Most guitarists have trouble when alternate picking when the pick is caught in between the higher string (pitch) and the lower string. If you can up pick at the same speed as down picking then you learn to make that tiny motion with your wrist to readjust the pick.That's why he's telling you to practice that blues lick starting with both an up and a down stroke. You could also just run through scales with a metronome only using up strokes to build up the muscle memory too. Most people can down pick like a fucking machine but if you tell them to do the same thing but with upstrokes they sound like they just picked up a guitar for the first time. Speed comes with accuracy and balance and if your down picking is better than your up picking well then you're gonna end up tripping over notes in certain runs.

It's just surprising that he's mentioned that story about his up picking but he's never mentioned specifically practicing up picking in any of the old REH vids or in these other lessons. Maybe he's unaware of it or maybe he's just trying to keep his secrets.

[tldubbtldubb]

This dude is such a great teacher. I would pay any amount of money to take lessons from Paul.

[BhavyeJain]

Who cannot love this guy! Such a brilliant player and such a fun instructor too!

[UltimaRedFireEskimo]

Paul is so full of wisdom. Great lesson.

[Clasan]

Impressed! Unlike many other so well he mastered all type styles available and with feeling, like I said, he's just the best.

[michaelmiller-cedu]

Paul is a gift to the world! We love you man!

[gauthierlinon]

I confirm, I learned the second lick (not as a starting point but I wasn't very experimented) and now I can play it really fast (as fast as Paul) but learning it will probably stay one of the most frustrating things in my guitarist's life! There are one million parameters you have to know and millions of experiments you have to try to finally reach good results...

[Bmxmusikian]

Heres a great tip I stumbled upon by accident..
Play fret 01234 using all alternate picking across the strings for a few minutes, break, play again, break...then try pauls hard lick.
Think this works to improve your picking because the more notes you play on each string (in this case 5 per string), the easier your brain thinks it is because you arn't crossing strings as ofter, and your wrist gets a break between each cross..

[shivakrishnan]

He is one of the guitar teachers along with Joe Satriani, Petrucci, Guthrie Govan, Vai who have immense knowledge and are so down to earth when teaching

[justinelliott]

haha - that alternate picking exercise he's famous for teaching has only taken me about 15 year to play up to tempo and cleanly but to get to that point it made me a decent alternate picker. So thank you Paul ! :)

[Murphy_lab_R]

Oh how I would have killed to have him as my teacher back in 1980!!!