Caren (or was it Karen?), a teacher on Guitartricks has a really good, but short, set of videos on Travis Picking, and I've adapted it for other things. After viewing those videos I had a difficult time finding them, but I'd go to her page under instructors and get there through that.
Her method is basically this: develop the muscle memory so you can pick without even thinking about it. You need to do this to be able to sing along anyway.
Start out as slow as you need to to get the pattern down. And she means really, really slow. "Accuracy builds speed," and she's correct.
She repeats regularly, "If you put it in wrong, it will come out wrong." I've followed this advice in every attempt to learn a new pattern. I think it should work for any kind of picking.
It's the same idea with Justin's Chord Perfect exercise. You start by breaking down the individual aspects of the chord until they all sound good. Then the fingers lift from the strings and drop into place; over and over again. Only then do you practice "Changing Chords in a Minute.
So those two instructors worked for me, but different ones may work for others. We're all hunter gatherers on the web looking for the instructor that "clicks." Same thing with private lessons, but costly. Looping videos is a lot cheaper that having someone explain the same thing over and over until it sinks in. But I'm not discounting private lessons, even it's just occasionally for a course correction.
Pick on!
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