Paul Gilbert named a song "Be My Wife" and then filled it with a lick so busy that your picking hand needs a lawyer, a coffee break and possibly couples counselling. This is thirty seconds of me asking one hand to pick, pluck and tap all at once while it quietly files a complaint.
The clip is a short lick from Paul Gilbert's "Be My Wife" that welds hybrid picking onto picking-hand tapping. Fun footnote: Gilbert didn't actually hybrid-pick the first part — I do, purely because I enjoy making my own life harder. Tabs and Guitar Pro files are included so you can suffer accurately.
How this hybrid picking and tapping lick works
The whole trick is giving every finger on your picking hand a fixed job so it never has to re-grip mid-phrase. The pick handles the notes on the lower strings, your middle finger plucks the higher string (that's the "hybrid" part), and then a spare finger from the same hand reaches over to tap a note on the fretboard. Three roles, one hand, zero switching — the pick stays planted between your thumb and index the entire time, so tapping never means dropping it.
The concrete takeaway: practise it slowly and assign each note to a specific digit before you add speed. If you know in advance whether a note is "pick", "middle-finger pluck" or "tap", your hand stops panicking and the lick almost plays itself. It's a great gateway into wider guitar techniques, and if you want to build your own version, borrow the logic from my guide to lick creation.
Do that, and you'll sound like Paul Gilbert — or at least like someone whose picking hand hasn't yet demanded overtime pay. Want the Guitar Pro file and the slow-motion version? They live on Patreon.