Alternate picking
Technique in which every note is taken with the opposite stroke to the one before it: down, up, down, up, with no exceptions.
Strict alternation keeps the hand in a repeating cycle, which is what allows speed, and it makes even-numbered groups of notes fall under the fingers identically each time. The difficulty is the crossing between strings, where the hand must either play an extra stroke or accept a different pick direction on the next string. Whole practice regimes exist just to smooth that seam, and economy picking is the deliberate decision to abandon strict alternation to avoid it.
Example: a fast run in three-note-per-string shapes is far easier in alternate picking than in pure downstrokes, which is why so much modern lead playing is built on it.
See also
Related
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