Economy Picking

Economy picking is another picking technique that's a cross between alternate picking and sweep picking.

The rules of economy picking are as follows.

• If you’re playing on one sting, use alternate picking
• If you’re moving to higher pitched string, use a down stroke
• If you’re moving to a lower pitched string, use an up stroke

The following is a tab file of a popular major scale shape in the key of A. Down and up strokes have been notated conforming to the economy picking rules. Notice that when moving to a higher pitched string a down stroke is always used, and when moving to a lower pitched string an up stroke is always moved. For everything else, alternate picking is used.

In the case where there is 2 down or 2 up strokes one after the other, DO NOT use 2 separate strokes. Instead, use the SAME stroke. This is the same technique that is used in sweep picking.

Here is another example, but using a popular 3 note per string major scale shape.

If we used strict alternate picking throughout this entire scale shape, you would have used a total of 35 strokes. By using economy picking though, and because we can use the same stroke when crossing strings we only use a total of 26 strokes, a reduction of 26%. That's over a quarter less strokes used. Fewer strokes mean less over all work done. This generally means it’s easier to play.

Try using economy picking with other scale shapes or licks. Notice that if you use economy picking over an arpeggio shape, it would resemble sweep picking a lot.