First of all, a big thanks to Pebber for continuing to upload lessons on youtube to make us suck less! I know he is super-busy and this is a problem I think a lot of guys encountered at the beginning of their guitar studies, so I thought I would post the question here.

While practicing scales I noticed that my technique sucks MORE when I play the descending parts. This applies both to picking the notes on one string and to jumping from a string to the lower adjacent one. It seems to me the first problem can only be helped by a lot of practice. The second I’m not sure about. I noticed that my thumb tends to stay in the same position while the rest of the fingers are moving back (toward the headstock) and down (toward the lower strings, that is upwards physically). Maybe there is a little pivoting motion as well. So apart from making sure I DO move the thumb and of course keep practicing, is there anything else I should watch out for/avoid/do? In short, any ideas in general as to how I can improve my technique when playing descending scales on more than one strings? Thanks in advance!

Heres two exercises that I feel have helped me improve my decending practice them everyday, slowly at first, to a metronome hope this helps


http://www.pbguitarstudio.com/pdf_files/...g%20Pattern.pdf

http://www.pbguitarstudio.com/pdf_files/...%20Patterns.pdf

Cheers! I'm going to practice these! :)

Makes sense. I guess I overcomplicate things sometimes, though I thought I'd better ask before I pick up some bad habits ;) Cheers Pebber!

Yep, I'll do that! Thanks Pebber! This may sound trivial but I also noticed that it helps if I go through a particular movement in my head before I even lift a finger. For me it tends to be the case that the first mistakes I make when learning something on the guitar become internalised, so when I mess something up I usually mess it up the same way. This practice helps re-training my brain.