A good way to work on alternate picking is to choose three or four notes, and work on those. Too often, players who are trying to improve their right hand dexterity get hung up by playing too many notes with the left hand.I hear a lot of players running whole scales from the sixth string to the first , and playing them really sloppy.Keeping it very basic-and using only a few notes-and playing slowly with perfect rhythm is a task in itself.