Alternate Picking
If you have been playing the examples using your right hand fingers, you have been alternating i, m, i, m etc or m, i, m, i etc. This applies whether the note is a quarter note, a half note or an eighth note. If you have been using a pick, all of the examples you have so far played involved a downward motion, indicated by a a. With the introduction of eighth notes, the technique of down and up ( s ) picking is used. This is called alternate picking, and it is essential for the development of speed and accuracy.
Alternate pick motion - a s a s a s a s
In alternate picking, use a down pick on the beat (the number count) and an up pick off the beat (the "and" count). Apply alternate picking to the previous example. As a general rule play eighth notes using alternate picking, although some grooves work better with all downstrokes.
The following example shows a common way of using eighth notes in a Rock song.
Practice your Blues scales using eighth notes as shown in the following example. First run through the scale playing each note once, and then playing each note twice. Make sure all your notes sound strong and even.
Extending Scale Patterns
As you learned in the previous lesson, it is possible to find higher and lower versions of the same notes in many different places on the fretboard, e.g., the note G on the 3rd fret of the 4th string and the G an octave higher on the 5th fret of the 2nd string. Because of this feature of the instrument, it is possible to repeat some of the notes of any scale within a fingering pattern. The following example shows the C Blues scale at the 3rd position with the notes G (5th) and Bb(flattened 7th) added on the 4th string. This demonstrates that you can start a scale pattern on any note of the scale instead of always having to start on the root note.
Here is a bass line which makes use of these extra notes. Once again, take care with the fingering of this example.
The Dotted Quarter Note
A dot written after a quarter note means that you hold the note for one and a half beats.
A dotted quarter note is often followed by an eighth note.
