I love this little country lick. I used to have a competition with my old guitar teacher seeing who could play it the fastest. When I play this I use one finger for most of it until the very end. This can turn in to good practice using a different finger every time you play this lick.

I use the hybrid picking technique to play this but you can also use just a pick or your thumb and first finger and still get the same result

I tend to use this exercise as a warm up before an acoustic gig but I also practice it at home to a metronome to help with my timekeeping. I must admit it doesn’t have much musical value to it but it certainly works the right hand once you start getting some speed behind it.

Its important to make sure the fingers on your picking hand don’t move too far away from the strings they are playing. Have a close look at the video to see. My second finger always plays string 1 and my first finger always plays string 2. My thumb is the only one that changes strings.

For my fretting hand my first finger plays fret 1. Second finger always plays fret 2 and my third finger always plays fret 3. As with all these exercises… start slow and make sure you are accurate with both your picking hand and fretting hand.