If you are one of the guitar players who have reached a plateau in their playing and need an extra boost, you probably need to work on your picking. Everything from tenseness to how to hold a guitar pick plays a big part in your ability to perform a run cleanly and clearly. So the focus of this lesson is to show you a major fundamental, which is how to hold a guitar pick.
Going over how to hold a guitar pick the correct way is almost near impossible, because truly there is no perfect set of rules that one must follow in order to pick better. However, there are different techniques that one should try to accomplish to learn how to hold a guitar pick for their desired result. An example is that strumming chords on an acoustic guitar would certainly be different than how to hold a guitar pick in a heavy metal shredder lick. So first we should examine what it is that you want to do, and then explain the techniques that are best suited for the desired result.
First you want to choose the right pick for your playing. Softer picks are better for strumming chords and harder picks are better for articulate style playing. Of course the softer the pick, the less pick noise you will hear, the harder the pick the louder the attack on the string. So it's safe to say, country, bluegrass or folk music you want to stick with softer picks, while rock or heavy metal styles you should stick to thick picks.
So how to hold a guitar pick for different techniques? Well let's start with specific tricks of playing on the guitar.
Sweep picking, which involves such things as arpeggios in rock music, involves holding the pick lightly at an angle as if you are going to strum. However, instead of strumming, you want to dampen each note slightly and let the pick touch the string just below the next before picking it. This lets each note have a pause in-between each other to create a clear sweep sound.
Speed picking, involves something quite different. When it comes to speed picking, you want to get your fingers up on the pick almost to the tip. The less pick, the better as speed picking is all about economy. You do not want to have wasted space or wasted motion when trying to play with speed and accuracy.
Pinch Harmonics, involves letting the fleshy part of your thumb hang over the pick. This technique is sort of half pick, half thumb when picking a note. The effect of your skin touching the string gives the guitar that scream sound!
Of course, generally there are no rules and what matters the most on how to hold a guitar pick is to do what is comfortable. However, you do need to work out techniques you would like to accomplish. The real key to it all is to play it slowly and accurately, then work your way up to speed. Playing something wrong quickly builds bad habits that will be difficult to break later on and keep your picking under your true abilities.
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