Picking base notes

I am struggling to pick individual strings, like the base notes of chords, without hitting the one below or above. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to improve my feel for strings, so that I hit the right ones without looking? I will keep practicing in the meantime, but any advice or tricks would be appreciated.

You can control much of that unwanted string noise by muting with the both hands. Look for lessons re Muting!

Your pickinng accuracy will improve as you continue to practice. Between the two tecniques you should be able to solve this problem.

Originally Posted by: akirasieben

I am struggling to pick individual strings, like the base notes of chords, without hitting the one below or above. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to improve my feel for strings, so that I hit the right ones without looking? I will keep practicing in the meantime, but any advice or tricks would be appreciated.

Slow, deliberate repetitious practice is how to get it done.

The goal is to improve the accuracy of your picking hand. And with that in mind you want to minimize the motion you need to make. This is tricky & counter intuitive because when you start learning & have to strum you want to make a wide arc & large scale motion with your hand. But you need to tighten that motion to make it very small to isolate & hit only one string in this case.

So, work toward making your bass string picking motion very small. Only enough to graze over the string & that's it. Any more motion is wasted effort & makes it harder to avoid hitting other strings. This can also be applied to your strumming!

This lesson is about combining chord strumming with single note melodies. Have a look at my right hand picking technique to see an example of minimal motion.

https://www.guitartricks.com/lesson.php?input=11170&s_id=426

Hope that helps!