Hybrid picking: pick and fingers, country style
The pick plays an alternating bass line on A, D and E chords while the middle and ring fingers pluck two higher strings together, like a piano's left and right hands, with a walk up the low string back to A. Hybrid picking, pick and fingers at once, is how country and rockabilly players get a bass and a chord from one guitar, and it reaches string combinations a pick alone can't.
Opens in the player looped and counted in, with drums playing along, and speeds up 5 % every 2 loops to 100 bpm. No account or microphone needed.
- Goal tempo
- 100 bpm
- Starts at
- 60 bpm
- Length
- 4 bars, looped
- Tuning
- E standard
- Time
- 4/4
- Level
- Intermediate
- Plays with
- Drums
How to play it
Hold the pick between thumb and first finger as usual and curl the middle and ring fingers just under the strings they pluck.
Notes without a letter under them are picked; m and a are the middle and ring fingers. On A, the pick plays the open A string, then E on the D string's 2nd fret, and the fingers pluck the G and B strings together between them. The last pair of the bar moves up to the B and high E strings.
D does the same with the open D and A strings as the bass and the D chord's top notes for the fingers; E uses the open low E and B at the A string's 2nd fret, with G sharp and B on top. Bar 4 is E again, then a rest and a walk up the low string, E, F sharp and G sharp, back to A.
Keep the fingers' notes short and light and the bass steady: it's the piano's left hand under the right.
Mistakes to watch for
- The fingers' notes louder than the bass, or the other way round.
- Moving the whole hand towards the strings the fingers pluck, so the pick lands on the wrong bass string.
- Holding the pick too far out, which gets in the way of the middle finger.
A speed plan
The player starts at 60 % of the goal and plays each tempo twice before stepping up:
- 60
- 65
- 70
- 75
- 80
- 85
- 90
- 95
- 100
That's 16 loops and about 3 minutes before you're playing at 100 bpm. If it stops being clean on the way, stop the ramp there and loop that tempo until it is. With a microphone or an audio interface you can record while you play instead: Demiurg checks every loop and steps up only after two clean ones in a row, and back down after a poor one.
Questions
How fast should I play Hybrid picking?
The goal is 100 bpm in eighth notes, which is 3.3 notes a second. Start wherever every note is clean: the player begins at 60 bpm. Signed in, you can set a goal of your own, slower or faster, on the Exercises page.
What is hybrid picking?
Playing with the pick and the free fingers of the picking hand at once, usually the middle and ring. It lets you play notes on strings that aren't next to each other at the same moment, and it's central to country, rockabilly and a lot of modern rock.
Is hybrid picking the same as fingerstyle?
No: in fingerstyle the thumb plays the bass and there's no pick. Hybrid picking keeps the pick for the bass and single notes, so you can switch to ordinary picking in an instant.
More rock and blues exercises
All 24 rock and blues exercises · Scales on the neck · Fretboard notes trainer · All 107 exercises