Somewhere between "I only use a pick" and "I went full fingerstyle and now own three ottomans" lives a technique that gleefully refuses to pick a side: hybrid picking. You keep the pick between thumb and index, and you draft your middle finger in to pluck the strings the pick can't be bothered to reach. It is the guitar equivalent of patting your head while rubbing your belly, except your belly is a high E string and your head owes you money.
This clip is Lick #57 — a short hybrid picking lick built almost entirely from pentatonic notes you already know. Nothing exotic, no new shapes to memorise: just the same familiar box, played with a pick AND a finger at the same time, so your right hand finally learns to walk and chew gum.
How this hybrid picking lick works
The trick is division of labour. The pick handles the notes on the lower string of each pair, and your middle finger snaps the note on the higher string — often a wider jump than the pick would comfortably alternate to. Because it's pentatonic, most of these pairs are string-skipping intervals that would be a nightmare with pure alternate picking, but become almost lazy once the finger takes the top note. Concrete takeaway: start ridiculously slow and watch that your middle finger plucks UP and out, not sideways — a clean, slightly aggressive snap is what gives hybrid picking that percussive, country-fried attack.
Do it for a week and you get two gifts: cleaner string-skips, and phrasing that no strict picker can copy, because that finger-plucked note has a different tone colour than the picked ones. Same five notes, suddenly twice the personality.
Warning: once your middle finger tastes power, it will demand to be in every lick you write, like a session musician who's decided the band is now his. If yours has already unionised, feed it more phrases (and grab the PDF and Guitar Pro file) over on my Patreon.