Holding the Pick

figwold
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Sat Aug 01, 2009 4:04 pm

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?


haoli25
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Sat Aug 01, 2009 4:24 pm

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.


figwold
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Sat Aug 01, 2009 4:36 pm

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.


Chasplaya
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Sat Aug 01, 2009 4:44 pm

figwold wrote:
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.
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 down


AndyT
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Sat Aug 01, 2009 5:44 pm

I don't use a pick. I have used one but I just don't have the same level of control and feedback from a pick as I do my fingers.


BigBear
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Sat Aug 01, 2009 6:38 pm

I've always flatpicked with my hand in a postion like holding a pen to write. I noticed Neil curls his hand more with the top of his index finger alost facing the strings. Very hard postion to get used to for me!


Chasplaya
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Sat Aug 01, 2009 6:58 pm

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.


wrench
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Sat Aug 01, 2009 10:12 pm

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


speedie
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Sun Aug 02, 2009 1:08 am

I have not noticed that Wrench, but I am sure going to give it a try and find out. Thank you


figwold
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Sun Aug 02, 2009 4:55 am

Interesting - I had started to think that some cheap (and thick) picks I got with a guitar mag sound pretty bad, but no idea what they are made of.


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