TAB by Steve Morse. Steve Morse: Take It Off The Top for guitar (tablature), intermediate sheet music. Includes an High-Quality PDF file to download instantly. Licensed to Virtual Sheet. Issues 2-13 are only available in PDF format, currently the videos and internal downloads are unavailable at this time. The download is available via the 'read issue' icon above. Steve Morse Interview & Style guitar lessons, Randy Rhoads Unpublished interview, Guthrie Govan reviews the new Vigier Fretless Guitar, all in our free guitar magazine. Steve Morse's almost mythical musical capabilities need no introduction. Marrying blazing chops to a singular sense of hook writing creativity, his distinctive brand of rootsy American virtuosity has inspired generations of players to think outside of the pentatonic box.
In this free video guitar lesson we will begin our complete look at hybrid picking.
Hybrid picking is the technique of using your pick with your picking hand fingers at the same time.
Hybrid picking is used by a HUGE number of players is every conceivable style. You have everyone from Albert Lee, Steve Morse, Eric Johnson to Brad Paisley. The list just goes on and on. It is an absolutely essential guitar technique to have nailed.
In this lesson series I have kinda re-arranged Mauro Giuliani's '120 Daily Right Hand Studies' to be played with hybrid picking. The Giuliani studies have been used for 200 years by classical guitar players to develop their flawless right hand technique.
So I have re-arranged those same studies for all of us hybrid pickers and the results have been phenomenal with all of my students.
Start with these six basic exercises. They will progressively get more difficult each lesson. In the end you will have a fantastic practice routine for hybrid picking that will enable you to hybrid pick virtually anything you can come up with.
Grab the PDF TAB download for this lesson here.
Have Fun!! More exercises are coming soon!!
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Hybrid Picking Patterns Pt.1
Last updated on April 13, 2019
If you’re a fan of Steve Morse’s playing, one of his most prominent techniques is alternate picking arpeggios instead of sweeping them. I think this is a great technique to have under your belt as it really heightens the dexterity of your picking hand, as well as giving that sweep-picking sound without having to learn to sweep pick. I personally prefer the sound of alternate picking arpeggios to sweep-picking arpeggios as they’re not as obvious-sounding as when you change to sweep-picking on the fly. I remember my first guitar teacher showing me these exercises in the early 90s, but it was a fair few years later before I discovered the benefits of them.
Steve Morse Band
Alternate Picking Arpeggios provide a gratifying workout for your picking hand, as well as improving your overall hand coordination no end. If you’re new to this technique, it basically involves alternate picking an arpeggio instead of sweep-picking it; that’s really all there is to it. This exercise also adds another dimension to your alternate picking as you’re going from linear scalar-type picking to applying vertical movement to alternate picking.
To get this technique going, I like to start off with a pattern across three strings, then add in the others. There are a couple of benefits here: a) you won’t get frustrated by starting off with a big shape, and b) you’ll practice all the nuances of changing strings on an upstroke and a downstroke.
Here’s the first pattern (we’ll use an A Major arpeggio as you’ll see by pattern 4). Whenever I can, I like to use these numbered diagrams instead of tab or notation as a lot of people seem to like them. Simply follow the number sequence and repeat it ad nauseam using alternate picking starting on a downstroke.
Pattern 1
Steve Morse’s 80/20 Rule
I like Steve Morse’s 80/20 rule when learning a lick or run which is to play at slowly 80% of the time without making any mistakes, but play it as fast as you can 20% of the time so that you have the experience of both and they eventually meet in the middle.
Pattern 2
Once you’re ripping through pattern 1, or you’re comfortable with it, try pattern 2, again starting on a downstroke and following the number sequence:
Pattern 2 probably slowed you up a little; this is because the picking sequence from pattern one is now reversed. Don’t worry, this is intentional and will help you work through the nuances of alternate picking required to perfect this technique.
Pattern 3
For pattern 3 we add another note and reverse the picking of the previous pattern again. Follow the number sequence (1-11 here) starting on a downstroke.
Steve Morse Guitar Lesson Pdf Download
And finally, here’s Pattern 4 which is the complete A Major arpeggio:
Steve Morse Guitar Lessons
At this point you should be fairly comfortable with the technique and be able to execute this arpeggio consistently at a good speed. Try moving it up and down the fretboard to expand the technique to all fret sizes, then you could follow the same procedure for any other arpeggio shapes you like the sound of. If you want a more in depth look at this technique, check out Troy Grady’s reverse engineering of it with the man himself.