String Skipping

Don’t be a chicken. Beef up your chops with Andy Saphir’s string skipping licks and you’ll be able to make mincemeat of your contemporaries!

In thIs month’s Chops shop we’re continuing with the string skipping technique, only this time incorporating exercises involving six-string chord skipping ideas, as well as intervallic concepts such as 6ths and 10ths. As seen in last month’s lesson, string skipping can present some technical challenges with both the fretting and the picking hand, so a considered approach is necessary. In all of the following examples, I suggest alternate picking throughout, but if you feel more comfortable using another approach that’s fine, as long as it’s not haphazard, and you consider what might be appropriate for each of these exercises, and ultimately your own licks. For best results they should all be played at a slow tempo at first, and with a metronome.