This is the 12th exercise from the Core Skills section on Picking.

Here we play the A major chord, but this time using alternate picking. This is a useful skill for playing guitar and a good habit to start learning right away.

Here we pick across 5 strings with down / up strokes. This can take more control than the previous exercise, but stick at it until it becomes second nature.

Alternate picking can be tricky at first, particularly when switching between strings. But practice will help you to get used to it, and eventually develop a lot of speed with your playing!

A major is a very common chord, and just like the E minor chord from the previous exercise it is built from combining any of these 3 notes:

A - C# - E

The notes on the strings are played in this order:

A - E - A - C# - E

Notice that each of these notes is either A, C# or E. You could even play the Low E string too (because E is one of the three A major notes). But this is generally not done because it doesn't sound quite as nice. That's because with chords, the first note of the chord is the most important and dominant. We call it the root note. The name of the chord always tells you the root note. Here the chord we want is A major. A is the root note (as the name of the chord tells us) so we start from the A note.