Using Alternate Picking for Rhythm

Wow, I haven't posted in awhile, still trying to get things back to normal after an insane holiday season.

I'm sure almost everyone has heard the benefits of alternate picking over straight down strokes when it comes to speed, however fewer people know the reasoning for alternate picking when it comes to rhythm.

The idea behind alternate picking is to down stroke the on the beats and upstroke off the beats (the “and” when counting.) This obviously will allow you to play faster but it will also greatly improve your rhythm if you get it instinctual.

If your right hand learns to “feel” the beat when you down pick, and “feel” offbeats when you up pick, then your need to count will actually diminish, at faster speeds, especially when improvising, you can heavily syncopate a line by doing it in mainly upstrokes, your hands will do the rest without thinking.


However there are a couple exceptions to the rules of down stroked beats and up stroked offbeats.

Sixteenth notes through a wrench into the system, therefore when dealing with sixteenth note rhythms you have to change the rules, down stroke the beats and the offbeats (the “ands”, upstroke the sixteenth notes (the “e”s and “a”s). Apply these rules to any phrase with sixteenth notes in them, then switch back when you're not dealing with them.


Sweep picking is done all in one direction, this technique is still perfectly valid when playing notes on parallel strings that are in such fast succession that they are impossible for you to alternate pick.

Analyzing Chord Progressions

I hope everyone had a great holiday. Mine was insane, regular posting will resume as of today, with another post about chord substitution, this should be the last one for awhile.

This time I'm going to take the opposite approach I took in my blues discussion, and take a previously written song and pick apart the chords involved.

I'm going to use Gershwin's “summertime” here, this tune has been done by a pile of Jazz Musicians, this version is in the key of A minor.

Am     |Bb7    |Am   E7|Am   A7|

Dm7    |F7     |F#m7 B7|E7     |

Am     |Bb7    |Am     |G7     |

C    Am|B7   E7|Am     |Bm7  E7|

First we're going to go through and name all the diatonic chords – that is chords that fall within the harmonized scale.

A quick note, all chord symbols will be written with upper case roman numerals, and the chord qualities will be shown, the reasoning for this is because in more complex progressions, and minor keys, it becomes more and more bizarre to use uppercase for major and lower case for minor – I'm also going to relate the chords back to the A major scale, this is so that we don't get caught up in which minor scale we're using, since none of them are more important then any others.

Im              Im   V7 Im
Am     |Bb7    |Am   E7|Am   A7|

Vmim7                    V7
Dm7    |F7     |F#m7 B7|E7     |

Im              Im  
Am     |Bb7    |Am     |G7     |

bIII Im      V7 Im      IIm7 V7
C    Am|B7   E7|Am     |Bm7  E7:||

Now let's go through it again and analyze for secondary dominance.

Im              Im   V7 Im   V7/IV
Am     |Bb7    |Am   E7|Am   A7|

VIm7          IIm7/V V7/V V7
Dm7    |F7     |F#m7 B7|E7     |

Im              Im      V7/bIII
Am     |Bb7    |Am     |G7     |

bIII Im V7/V V7 Im      IIm7 V7
C    Am|B7   E7|Am     |Bm7  E7:||

Now let's find the tritone subs, an easy way to look for these is to find dominate 7 chords not yet analyzed with the next root a semi-tone away.

Im      subV7   Im   V7 Im   V7/IV
Am     |Bb7    |Am   E7|Am   A7|

VIm7   subV7/V  IIm7/V V7/V V7
Dm7    |F7     |F#m7 B7|E7     |

Im      subV7   Im      V7/bIII
Am     |Bb7    |Am     |G7     |

bIII Im V7/V V7 Im      IIm7 V7
C    Am|B7   E7|Am     |Bm7  E7:||

The reason it's subV7/VI and not subV7/II/V/V, is simply because the latter is incredibly difficult to read, avoid multiple /s whenever possible.

This is also a delayed resolution - meaning it doesn't resolve to where it should (E7) right away, it has some other chords before.

And there you have it, using that method you can pick apart almost all if not all chord progressions you've heard. There's some stuff I haven't gotten into here, but those are LONG explanations.