The following exercise is designed to help you increase your alternate picking speed. We’ll do this by pushing slightly beyond your ‘comfortable limit’ in short controlled bursts. By ‘comfortable limit’ I mean the fastest speed you can play before you start to make mistakes or go out of time.

The lick is a short, single bar which consists of mostly 16th notes. However the first 3 notes of each half are 16th note triplets. You can play these faster than 16th notes. You can fit 16 sixteenth notes in a bar but you can fit 24 sixteenth note triplets. Once you get comfortable with this exercise you’ll find you’ll be able to increase your alternate picking speed quicker than you thought!