Outside Picking

“Outside picking” is an alternate picking technique for guitar in which the lower of the two strings (lower refers to “closer to the floor” not lower in pitch; the B string is lower than the G string on a standard-tuned guitar in this regard) is picked with downstrokes and the higher string is picked with upstrokes. When this is done, the pick ends up “outside” the space between the picked strings after the note is picked, hence the name of the technique. For example, if you’re playing the D and G strings on a guitar, and you use downstrokes on the G string, and upstrokes on the D string, the pick will end up “outside” the D and G strings.