Here's a very valuable tip. I wish someone had given it to me when I first started out. It would have saved me a lot of backing up and relearning.

When learning something new—practice S-L-O-W-L-Y.

In fact, get a metronome. A good electronic metronome will run you somewhere between $15 and $25 (the wooden pyramid clockwork kind are very "traditional," but they're also very pricy!). A metronome is a real tyrant, and one can learn to hate the things, but that's the point.

When you're starting to learn a picking pattern—say, like Burl Ives Basic which I describe above, or alternating bass "fingerpicking" ("Freight Train," "Railroad Bill," or dozens of other songs)—start out with a metronome setting of no faster than 60 clicks (beats) per minute. That's one click per second.

[Click] Thumb - [Click] Index finger - [Click] thumb - [Click] middle finger – repeat many, many times.

When you can do that smoothly and cleanly, move the metronome up a couple of clicks to, say , and do it again. When that goes well (smooth and clean and you can do it without feeling rushed or braiding your fingers), move it up another couple of clicks. Keep repeating this. But not in one session. Over a number of weeks, maybe, oozing the number of clicks per minute up a couple each day--but not increasing the speed until you can do it CLEANLY at your present speed—until you can make it roll faster than you would ever reasonably want to play it.

That way, you get it down smoothly, solidly, and cleanly and you have a lot of speed in reserve

This same procedure holds for various other picking patterns. And it holds for scales. And, for that matter, for classical pieces.

This, for example, is how one can accomplish such things as the three-finger tremolo in classic guitar pieces like Francisco Tàrrega's Requerdos de la Alhambra or how flamenco guitarists can play scales so fast they make the strings smoke.

The fastest way to learn to play with facility is to start practicing slowly and carefully.

Good pickin'!

Don Firth