Josh Meader's Picking Secrets

I always thought that Josh Meader has a super-smooth picking technique. Turns out that he uses a very simple trick when changing strings.

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Ah cool, I follow him on instagram and was wondering about his technique

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He plays some crazy smooth lines, doesn’t he? I too was wondering about how he picks so fluid and was glad when I found this video! His technique is so simple.

One little thing I saw in the comments is this:

A detail that I found made a big difference was that Josh is picking down/up when ascending the scale and switches to up/down when he is descending the scale. I found this helped balance the picked notes with the slurred notes. Thank you for the great interview and to Josh for sharing this awesome technique!

Can anyone confirm this? It’s very hard to see what he’s doing at speed!

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Yeah he really does. Phenomenal player overall.

That’s an interesting comment you quoted. I honestly couldn’t tell it’s way too fast for my eyes! But I’d be interested to know also.

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so his technique is basically UWPS, never thought that his technique was this simple lol
i have some of his tabs which i could upload if theres any demand

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Very cool!
Derryl Gabel advocates a similar approach in some of his material…
For example in his FIT lesson pack he says, “Notice that only the first two notes are picked and the third is hammerd-on when ascending and pulled-off when descending. This gives a smoother sound as opposed to picking every note.”
It also makes some of these runs much easier! (If you can get the notes to sound evenly.)

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yes please, would love to cop some of his licks!

I’m not terribly familiar with Derryl’s music, but it seems that Josh excels at having such a smooth attack. It’s very hard to tell the difference between his picked notes and legato notes.

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Yes, Derryl has a similar smooth/soft attack which allows the picked and legato notes to sound evenly.
This is interesting stuff…yet another cool solution to the problems alternate picking can create!

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Melodic Minor Line #2.pdf (112.4 KB)

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thank you so much!! looks very difficult to play. I will sit down with my guitar and see if I can get this one under my fingers.

Check this out… Just incredible.

What’s with the circular motion he makes with his whole hand?

@aliendough I’ve lost track of how many player videos you’ve posted that make me want to permanently hang up my guitar lol!

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haha, I know the feeling! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

This video doesn’t help much either, does it?

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Nope! I was just playing through it thinking it wasn’t a huge deal (I’ve been working on a lot of 2nps USX) but the 5th measure has all those string skips that no longer work for standard USX. He’s still doing D U D U there though, so he must have some mixed escape tricks going on. What a great player!

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sweeping, i think he has a video on it

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cool, doesn’t look like typical sweep picking. He’s a really great player, amazing technique.