I have been playing one and a half years and I have three major beefs with my guitar playing.

Firstly, I'm getting real confused about when I should be using alternate picking or downstrokes. e.g stuff off Divine Intervention. A specific example would be the song Sex Murder Art:

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|------------5---------7---6---5--------------------
|--4-6-7-4---7-4-6---6---6----7-6-5------------
|-----------------------------------------------------


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|------------1--------3---2---1---------------------
|--0-2-3-0---3-0-2---2---2---3-2-1-------------

E string palm muted



It seems to be on the border between downstrokes and alternate picking. I can play it with downstrokes, but I have to go as fast as I can, which gets tiring quick (however, the riff doesn't get played long enough for that to happen). I can also play it with alternate picking, but for several reasons I stuff up more than I do with downstrokes: 1. because I use the motion of my thumb sometimes more than my wrist 2. I am using my left little finger 3. I don't have metronome timing 4. all of this in combination with the palm muting across strings/strokes. My question is how do you people play riffs at this type of speed?

Secondly, I started off learning how to alternate pick exactly, note for note in solos, but listening to the solos off Divine Intervention, to stay with the same example, I can't tell if they are trem-picked scales or if they are actually played precisely. So my question is, are most fast picking solos tremolo picked (i.e. the artist has developed a degree of control and synchronisation between both hands, playing a sequence of notes and timing with their left hand and trem picking over it with the right hand) or do the artists actually learn the solos they make note for note?

It might sound a bit long winded, but this has been bothering me for a long time. I see on other posts, people telling me to pick with my wrist. But I'll be damned, my wrist just doesn't seem to be fast enough for solos like Psycho Holiday (Pantera). I have to use my arm to get the speed. I don't know if my alternate picking is just not up to scartch, but I'd surely like to hear someone send in a recording of themselves playing the Psycho Holiday solo. My picking seems to getting "slowdown" on certain combination of down/up strokes across strings. Another question: is it naturally faster to pick across two strings i.e E A E A E A.... with "down up down up...." or "up down up down" ?

Finally, when should one use sweep picking as opposed to alternate picking
e.g Dyer's Eve Solo:


-----------12--------------12---------------12---------------12-----|
-------12-----15------12-----15------12------15------12-----15--|
--14b------------14b-------------14b-------------14b--------------|
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------|

....or even Skull Beneath the Skin (Megadeth) ?

Can anyone shed some light on this? Thanks for your time.

i naturally use alternate picking for almost everything, just practice a lot of stuff with alternate pickin, as in all the riffs/songs you know

after a few weeks itll come naturally and you wont have to think about which one to play

use sweep picking for riffs that have continous down/upstrokes, though if the riff is slower, still use the sweep technique but play the notes ore of a stacatto style (like slower and individual, not as smooth as sweepin)

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personally i dont think theres a "right" way, alternate picking is usually faster and so for some things where downpicks are impossible, alternate picking would be the right choice. also it saves alot of energy.

for this you can go: (u for up, d for down)

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|------------1---------3-----2---1---------------------
|--0-2-3-0---3-0--2----2----2---3-2-1-------------
---u-d-u-d-d-u-d-u-d--u-d-u-d-u-d-u

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Yup.

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that was pointless

also, when you're going down strings like from e to a to d to g etc.. try sweeping it, so its all 1 downstroke and you just lift your finger off the fret.

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Is it really a good idea to learn different up/down picking sequences for different songs, or is it wiser to stick with alternate picking always? I find that my hand gets stuck trying to break away from conventional alternate picking.

I figured out how to play the sweep stuff. I was getting a pause in between repitions of the lick so I changed the point at which I was reversing direction so that the pause was taken up by the bend (Dyer's Eve) and in Skull Beneath The Skin it's taken up by a slide. Now I just need more practice...