Strategic Picking and the Improvised Line

Tony DeCaprio teaches his approach to strategic picking — the topic of his column for Just Jazz Guitar magazine. Tony's premise is that picking has a logic to it: like the bowing technique of the violin, the plectrum should follow the physics of the line you want to play, whether that's piano-like arpeggiations or horn-like phrasing. Many players overcompensate with the right hand on bebop and modern lines, and this class shows a more deliberate way.

What's covered

• Picking with the grain of the line — patterns like down-down-down-up rather than indiscriminate alternate picking or sweeps
• The rest stroke (apoyando) borrowed from classical technique, and treating the down/up motion as a pendulum
• Building lines from double fourths and other intervallic ideas
• Harmonic thinking behind the lines: harmonic minor, minor-fourth-chord relationships, and playing off the 9th and 11th
• Mixing slurs with picked notes — digging in with the nail so slurred notes still sound like a pick
• Staccato versus legato phrasing, and what the beboppers actually did

This is as much a class on developing your own improvised lines as it is on the often-overlooked art of the plectrum. 7 pages of musical notation included.