up/down picking for triplets

... half the time, I'll be up-picking on the beat..

(should I) just continue alternate picking DUD UDU DUD UDU...and don't worry that I'll be up-picking on the beat half of the time or

Which is the 'proper' way to do it? Thanks in advance...Patrick

Hi, Patrick,

The suggestion that you should down-pick every beat is fine at a beginner level as it builds discipline, but as you progress you'll find that it's not always desirable to down-pick every beat. That's where the alternate picking you're using comes in, and the exercise you're using is a very good way of developing alternate picking as it forces you to use upstrokes on the weaker 2nd and 4th beats. More power to your elbow, mate.

Best,

A :-)

The proper way to do triplets is to learn both picking patterns.

As you suspect, alternating leads to faster runs. On the other hand, DUD throughout leads to emphasis on the beat. At times you'll want one or the other.

DUD is definately harder to get the hang of for a beginner, because the next beat's downstroke comes pretty quick. In fact, if you can move fast enough to do eighth note triplets in tempo, your pick is moving quick enough in that one spot to be doing sixteenth note triplets using alternate picking.

Thanks Alan and Tom. I appreciate everyone's input, but I especially value the advice of the seasoned pros like you guys.

There's actually multiple ways of doing this.

emphasising both "off beat" notes is sometimes what you want -- giving a picking pattern like "U D D"

Sometimes you want to emphasis the on-beat note only giving "D U U"

Sometimes you want to emphasis the on-beat note but want the rythmicness of "D U D"

Sometimes you want the rythmicness but not the emphasis "U D U"

Sometimes you want to emphasis beats 1 and 3 "D U D U D U"

Sometimes you want to emphasis beats 2 and 4 "U D U D U D"

Then you'll want to experiment with picking only where you want emphasis and hammer-on/pull-off for the other notes giving maybe something like " x x D"

Learn to do down picking on the beat first, it's the harder to get right from a technique point of view.

Once you can do that really really well, then work on emphasising the off-beat notes and up picking on the beat and all the other variations.

Interesting question. I was wondering the same thing myself, mayeb if Noteboat reads this he can comment.

My teacher gave me the song Apache. I think he said it wasn't the original, but anyway there is a part where you do triplets on the 4th and 5th string.

It's unusual for him but he didn't tell me how I should pick these and after playing around for a few days I find that it's easiest to pick them both as DUD, DUD, DUD, DUD, DUD, DUD, DUD, DUD instead of alternate picking.

In Apache, you're switching strings too, and one of the moves is from the 4th to the 5th string, so I find DDU DDU DDU DDU is the best way; especially as the first note is a quaver (eighth note) followed by two semi's.

Best,

A :-)