Hi all.

Hope you are all well

Been playing with a pick now for a couple of years.

I feel very comfortable with it, but my teacher feels i need to change my grip.

I hold it so the tip/point of the plectrum is facing towards the headstock
He says i should have the tip facing inturned towards the bridge so my thumb is more over the pick and im playing on the front side. my god i hope the makes sense.

Basically he thinks im losing potential dynamics and control, and i trust him
fully hes a great player to, he even showed me videos of famous guitarists to
Prove the point. And my attack for strumming isnt great, and i do miss my pinched
Harmonics most the time.

So iguess its a case of starting again. Because it feels quite odd again. But i cant find any videos of actualy what part of the plectrum to hit the strings with.

Was wondering if anyone else has ran into this issue?

Hope this all makes sense, if not i apologise for wasting a
little bit of your life and suggest you just move on!

Was wondering if anyone else has ran into an issue like this.

I wouldn't know. I play with my thumb. I feel I can control the depth of the sound better.

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1984 Squier Contemporary Stratocaster
1986 Peavey Envoy 110
1967 Kingston Acoustic

...Er ... I ... oops, I read the title wrong.

Anyway.

Hi louis1: as a non-pick user there's nevertheless a couple of worthwhile things I know about it. One is that if you have your pick pointing the way your teacher is telling you you'll find it easier to do what Eric Johnson recommends, and that is to sometimes dig in almost beneath the string as you strike it, pulling upwards, which gives more attack and also a certain type of sound. You don't want to be doing that all the time, but having it in your tool kit is handy.

Another thing to think about is "hybrid" picking, as practiced by the likes of Brian Setzer and Joe Bonamassa. These guys and others not only pick with the plectrum but also use the second and third fingers on the treble strings as well. Sort of halfway between fingerpicking and conventional plectrum playing. But they (especially Brian) do another thing as well: they sometimes tuck the pick away into the palm and hold it there and then play finger style with thumb and second and third fingers. Brian plays like that for the rhythm parts and then the first finger quickly produces the pick out of his palm for lead passages. It gives him different tones and an automatic boost for the single note runs.

Clever stuff.

And all of that I think will be easier if you use the pick the way your instructor is suggesting. So worth thinking about, at any rate.

Cheers - C

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Go with your teacher,otherwise your wasting your money. If you trust him do exactly what he tells you to do. When you don't understand him (ASK QUESTIONS).
----Danny,

This article is considered authoritative: http://www.tuckandpatti.com/pick-finger_tech.html

If you don't know Tuck, look him up -- a guitarist's guitarist and considered one of today's best.

trust your teacher

i rarely use a pick because i can do pinched harmonics and all of the other stuff that you do with a pick.

just adapt your style like your teahcer says with patience and you will probably notice a change

yes i've run into alot of pick holding issues. i think i did hold it like your describing, but i physically couldn't hold it in another position. my wrist was out, fingers currled in, and the tip of the was lined up with the tip of my thumb. as soon as i got the operation, i held it alot better.

so yes i have had the issue, no not cause i thought it was comfortable

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riley

Hold the pick in a natural comfortable position, don't force anything. The tip of the pick act as (almost) an extension of the first finger. Use the thumb to hold the pick in place.

The tip of the first finger will be pointing at the strings and the thumb will be pointing at the headstock. These are approximate because everyone has slightly different bio-mechanics. The hand should be relaxed and comfortable. One of the most important things to consider no matter how you pick is that you promote horizontal string vibration and less vertical vibration as relative to the fretboard. Trust me on that one it is very important. So, the pick must strike the strings flat at the tip and not angled (unless you intend it) so the string does not get pushed down.

The picking can really make a difference in the tone. Turn your pick at different angles and use different grips to hear it. The least amount of time that the pick touches the string producing the most horizontal vibration for the energy will give you the best result.

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My ability to spell is in direct proportion to the amount of coffee I've had.

I've been told my picking technique isn't exactly the greatest either. But it's the only way I've done it since I first got a guitar, and I just feel comfortable that way. The point of the pick is a 90 degree angle to the strings and I pick totally with the flat plane of the pick.

One day I was watching an Eric Johnson video where he explains how he doesn't pick every note and the pick has a way of bouncing off the strings. That's pretty much how my technique is.

For rhythms? Even I know I'm unorthodox. I play a lot like Bruce Springsteen. I've been known to pick so hard, the high E will run off the side and get hung up underneath the side of the neck humbucker. It astonishes other players that I very rarely break a string. Only happened to me once in the past 3-years and it was a B string. My rhythm picking technique is definitely not one to follow. hahaha.

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