Neil is quite insistent that the pick needs to be held between index and thumb, rather than with three fingers like the last quarter at the casino (which is how I hold it).
Any thoughts on how and why the pick should be held?
Holding the Pick
Martin, Neil is right. Hold the pick between you thumb and index
finger. It is more secure there so you will lose fewer picks.
When I first started I thought the sound hole in the acoustic was
a pick receptacle because that's where most of picks wound up...
inside the guitar.
You will also find that using Neil's method will give you more
accuracy even while strumming for striking alternating bass notes.
finger. It is more secure there so you will lose fewer picks.
When I first started I thought the sound hole in the acoustic was
a pick receptacle because that's where most of picks wound up...
inside the guitar.
You will also find that using Neil's method will give you more
accuracy even while strumming for striking alternating bass notes.
Thanks - I sort of feared that was the answer, and yes my pick receptacle has seen a bit of use too!
When I first started I found something as simple as strumming really quite difficult, by which I mean that getting the angle of pick on string right, particularly on the upstroke, was a mightmare. This is one of the main reasons why I bought a second acoustic, the relatively small APX500, as the problem was exacerbated on my Faith Jupiter jumbo. Now I am well past that issue, or at least I was, but the revised pick hold has brought it all back immediately as I find it difficult to strum with any subtlety at all.
I know that it just comes down to practice, which means my favourite simple strumming songs: There She Goes and American Pie I guess.
When I first started I found something as simple as strumming really quite difficult, by which I mean that getting the angle of pick on string right, particularly on the upstroke, was a mightmare. This is one of the main reasons why I bought a second acoustic, the relatively small APX500, as the problem was exacerbated on my Faith Jupiter jumbo. Now I am well past that issue, or at least I was, but the revised pick hold has brought it all back immediately as I find it difficult to strum with any subtlety at all.
I know that it just comes down to practice, which means my favourite simple strumming songs: There She Goes and American Pie I guess.
figwold wrote:
I found this issue to begin with and as a result I was concentrating too hard, my tutor at the time told me to do a simple 4/4/ strum but not look at the pick or soundhole area and relax my right arm a bit also not to hold the pcik like a vice; to begin with this I was way over the place but eventually after a bit of practice it came I was trying too hard essentially and as a result was always trying to smash those strings also the pick in thumb and forefinger allows you to free up other fingers to combine picking with a strum, don't worry about that yet just relax and get the strumm downThanks - I sort of feared that was the answer, and yes my pick receptacle has seen a bit of use too!
When I first started I found something as simple as strumming really quite difficult, by which I mean that getting the angle of pick on string right, particularly on the upstroke, was a mightmare. This is one of the main reasons why I bought a second acoustic, the relatively small APX500, as the problem was exacerbated on my Faith Jupiter jumbo. Now I am well past that issue, or at least I was, but the revised pick hold has brought it all back immediately as I find it difficult to strum with any subtlety at all.
I know that it just comes down to practice, which means my favourite simple strumming songs: There She Goes and American Pie I guess.
The angle Neil uses helps attack (if thats the right word) on the strings it ensures you strike the string at the better pick to string angle and by rotating the hand ever so slightly you can deepen the angle if you need to end up resting like Neil mentions on the next string or a lower angle for a strum across one or more strings.
I concur with Neil's method. That method also lends itself to combined flatpicking and fingerpicking such as Greg Lake's The Sage.
Speaking of picks....
When I practiced today I dumped out my whole pile of picks for no particular reason, but I made a discovery that puzzles me a little. I found that three different picks each gave a distinct and pretty different sound.
The three types of picks are celluloid medium, celluloid thin, and nylon thin. The celluloid thin gave more volume and brighter sound - and I mean brighter by a large margin - than the other two. The celluloid medium sounded like dead strings by comparison. The nylon thin was somewhere in between.
The guitar is a dreadnought body with D'Addario phosphor bronze lights (EJ16) less than a week old.
Anyone ever see this before?
wrench
Speaking of picks....
When I practiced today I dumped out my whole pile of picks for no particular reason, but I made a discovery that puzzles me a little. I found that three different picks each gave a distinct and pretty different sound.
The three types of picks are celluloid medium, celluloid thin, and nylon thin. The celluloid thin gave more volume and brighter sound - and I mean brighter by a large margin - than the other two. The celluloid medium sounded like dead strings by comparison. The nylon thin was somewhere in between.
The guitar is a dreadnought body with D'Addario phosphor bronze lights (EJ16) less than a week old.
Anyone ever see this before?
wrench