Pick trouble.......

Hi Sparra, I Recommend you get yourself a light guage thumb pick.  they are exactly the same as a flat pick, except they have a loop typed thing on top to hold it on your thumb.you can still hold it like a regular flat pick, and it will not move. Hope that helps

i hold my pick between the side of my middle finger and my thumb, keeping it straight with my index finger

i use to burn a hole in it with a cigarette at the top,worked like a charm!

hey satman i like your idea with the cigarette.I started guitar because i quit smoking and needed to keep busy.I,m sure i can find another source of heat.LOL.my fingers are always busy on this six string.have a good one...Badeye.

cool, already burnt one,but will look to buy one...Badeye.

That makes me fell better cause I still do that sometimes. <img src="images/smiley_icons/icon_redface.gif" border=0 alt="Embarassed">

"Nobody paints by ear so why would I play guitar by sight?"

<font color="crimson"></font><b></b><i></i>That's a question that will get you loads of opinions...different things work for different people and apparently there is no absolute on right or wrong... for most of my stuff I use a heavy thumb pick and three fingers. I thought that if it worked for Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed then it's good for me. I also use a heavy flat pick. Hold the pick very loosely for strumming...the looser the better...yes, you will drop it a lot but with lots of practice it'll become part of you...then when you need to dig in for lead work or power chords, just grip tighter and go for it.  A lot of really outstanding Bluegrass Mandolin and Guitar players use a piece of tortise shell (now illegal to possess) about the size of a half dollar and almost as stiff!

I found some good (and cheap) picks in my store. They are standard rounded edge triangels with a surface of small diamond shapes that gives it a sandpaper feel. This heavily reduses the picks urge to turn (and point to your knuckles insted of to your strings).

Unfortunately I don't now their name, and they are not marked with anything but thickness. A hint though is that they are colour coded, a speciffic thickness is alway the same colour (I bought a bunch of purple, black, orange etc. and tried out wich I liked best).

Another tip is to NOT let the pick stick out to much. The smaller part you stick out the lesser leverage the pick gets to twist out of your grip.

/Missen

<table border="0" align="center" width="90%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td class="SmallText"><b>Hendo wrote on Thu, 22 March 2007 11&#58;45</b></td></tr><tr><td class="quote">
Hey everyone,

I recall this thread from a while back.  The thing that stopped me dropping the pick was purely the way it was held. I read this online somewhere when I was learning the axe.

Bend your index finger under your thumb until the top segment of your finger is hidden by your thumb as though you were grabbing someones chubby cheeks.

This in efffect creates a loop.  The pick should now be able to sit between the underside of your thumb (ie the finger print bit)and the side of the top segment of your index finger.

Bloody hard to describe, I know.  The thing I found is that it was a bit like a golf grip, really unorthodox for a while but when your used to it, it feels natural.  The trick seems to be not to hold it as a 'pinch' whith the tips of your fingers....I just tried that then and it lasted about 3 strums.

Good thing is that it doesn't require much strength to hold on place, especially for thin picks, as the wide section of the pick it balanced so impact is spread across the entire pick width.

Hope this helps, if not, try summat else....

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That's exactly what worked for me. Aother advantage of this technique is that you don't keep breaking your thumbnail, as I did when I tried playing whilst pinching the pick. As I play fingerstyle about half the time (now I can use a pick without smashing my nails), this was a real bummer and meant that I had actually given up on using a pick at all for fear of sullying my carefully cultivated snot scrapers.

<img src="images/smiley_icons/icon_smile.gif" border=0 alt="Smile">