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As Of course, tone only matters if you can actually play it different ways. If a passage is fast, it may require to be alternate picked vs. strict down or up picked. There's no firm cutoff point where you should say, "This is fast, so I'll alternate pick." So long as there's no tonal requirement, the choice is totally yours - you may be more comfortable alternate picking even a slower passage. Usually a song will have a common note duration, like quarter or eighth notes. If I'm comfortable downpicking them, I will, saving alternate picking for speedanything faster than that. The downpicking helps ground your rhythm to the beat, which actually helps you alternate pick in time by having the downstrokes line up on the beats.
→When to Alternate Pick
The tone of alternate picking differs from straight down-picking simply because downstrokes and upstrokes have a slightly different tone. This gives alternate picking a kind of A-B-A-B sound, vs. A-A-A-A or B-B-B-B. Depending on the context of tone desired, alternate picking may or may not be desired. For instance, Metallica like to only down-pick their rhythms to give it a repetitive percussive sound. Rockabilly players, in contrast, like to alternate pick to a kind of swing sound.
== Practice ==