Hybrid Picking

Hybrid picking is a technique where you use both a pick and your fingers at the same time. It is traditionally seen as being a county guitar technique but it has many great applications for all guitarists.

This technique is sometimes referred to as chicken picking because of the plucking sound made by using your fingers to hit the strings. Hybrid picking give you the ability to play otherwise impossible wide interval and double stop licks and the technique can be used to great effect in both rhythm and lead playing. The combination of conventional plectrum picking and finger-style ideas is really useful for inspiring new approaches to guitar playing.

Generally you play the lower or bass notes with the plectrum and use your picking hand middle and ring finger to play notes on the higher strings. The first thing you will notice is that it immediately gives you the ability to play more than one note at a time.

In the following examples we will look at ways of using this picking technique to play some interesting and unusual licks.

Example 1

One of the great things about this technique is that it makes playing arpeggio passages much easier and you can switch between rhythm and lead playing really quickly.

Example 2

As well as arpeggios you can play block chords and double stops easily without having to resort to finger picking.

Example 3

Example three uses hybrid picking to ascend the G major scale in 6ths.

Example 4

In this example we are using octaves to ascend the G major scale. Notice how easy it is to play wide intervals and string skips with this technique.

See if you can expand on these examples and include some of them in your own playing. You may wonder how you ever managed without this great technique.