Two picking exercises

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For something new today I'm going to give a couple technical exercises, these should be done with a metronome and gradually speed up unless stated otherwise.

The first begins as a simple technique to start cross picking, play the C major scale in open position ascending but hit the high e string between every note. (downstroke scale note, upstroke open e string). The descending version of this exercise changes, downstroke the open note, and upstroke the scale note (putting the open e on the beat and the scale note off the beat.)


Once that's comfortable at a good speed (at least 160), time to make it harder, this time hit that e string twice, changing your picking each time:


And the same thing going down.

The second one is the major seventh stretch, this one is tougher and focuses on finger stretching more then picking, but is good for both, it's hard to explain so I'll just show you, for this one it's really important to sustain every note until it's picked the next time (or you move your finger to a different fret.


Then continue doing that pattern (shifting one finger down at a time all the way done the neck). As you get closer to the first fret the frets become bigger making the exercise harder. Again, get this one up to a good speed (at least 120, preferably more like 180) in small increments. Straight up down picking is critical.