Somewhere out there a pick and a middle finger are refusing to work in the same room, and today we're locking them in it until they get along. Welcome to the hybrid picking octave lick, the technique where your plectrum plays the low note, your finger snaps the high one, and together they sound suspiciously like you've been practising.
This little clip is a Guthrie Govan-style study: hybrid picking wrapped around octave shapes, leaping around the fretboard with that slick, modern fusion glide. It's short, it's nerdy, and it's exactly the sort of thing that makes people ask what you did to your right hand.
How this hybrid picking octave lick works
An octave is the same note twice, one higher and one lower, and on guitar the classic shape lives two strings and two frets apart, with the middle string muted so it doesn't rat you out. The hybrid picking part is the trick: instead of strumming both notes, you strike the lower string with the pick and pluck the higher string with your middle finger (the "m" if you speak classical). Two independent attacks, one clean octave. Because pick and finger fire together like a pinch, you get a crisp, percussive pop that a flatpick alone can't buy, and you're free to leap to the next octave shape without an awkward strum-mute-strum dance.
The useful takeaway: practise it slowly as a "pinch" motion first, pick-down and finger-up meeting in the middle, then move that same hand shape to new octaves and let your fretting hand mute everything else. Once the pinch is automatic, this same pick-and-finger split powers pentatonic licks and big octave riffs alike.
Fair warning: your middle finger will spend the first week acting like it's never met your pick before, which is fine, because neither had Guthrie's until he made them. If you want the tab and Guitar Pro file to torment both of them properly, they're on my Patreon.