Need some advice, please

aranaskell

I have been thinking a lot about this kind of thing recently, and it caused me to watch my picking hand carefully while I played different things on the guitar...
Before thinking about the pick itself, I think the first important thing is to find a comfortable seating position (with the body of the guitar sitting on your picking side thigh) and wrap your picking arm around the guitar so that your hand is hovering somewhere over the strings, just bridge side of the soundhole.
As you may know, in this style of playing, the wrist does not come into contact with either the bridge or the strings. So, first of all make a loose monkey grip fist and arch your wrist slightly.
Now test your picking grip...Bend both joints of your index finger, without exerting any force to keep the finger bent. Now close your thumb over the index so that the joint above your index fingernail is protruding from behind your thumb. It should look like the end of a pick.
Strum the strings lightly with this joint, and note that the contact point where the joint departs from the sixth string is closer to the neck that when it reaches the contact point of the first string (closer now to the bridge).
Now grip your pick so that the bottom of the pick is anchored by being pushed up against the base joint of your index finger. The top of the pick should thus be protruding from behind your thumb in the same way as the index finger was before, using the index finger to rest upon.
This is the basic grip. As you know, the downstroke and the rest stroke are important features of this style. Depending upon whether you are playing lead or rhythm, the angle of the wrist will change, bending to an extreme of almost 45 degrees for fast tremolo playing. Either way, you will be striking the strings with the leading edge of the pick, working at almost 9 o'clock for lead and moving to almost 11 o'clock for rhythm or tremolo. You will notice that it is most comfortable to perform rest strokes if you dig into the strings with the end of your pick pointing slightly upwards. That way, your pick will come to rest smoothly on the next string. When strumming quickly, or as in a tremolo sequence, you will notice that by changing the angle of the wrist, and not the grip itself, the pick will be almost glancing over the strings with its leading side edge, not really picking any individual string, but all of the strings you want to play. Do not be afraid to let your knuckles drag over the strings either when picking or strumming. I will post this and if you have any other questions I will write some more! Good luck...

aranaskell

I have been thinking a lot about this kind of thing recently, and it caused me to watch my picking hand carefully while I played different things on the guitar...
Before thinking about the pick itself, I think the first important thing is to find a comfortable seating position (with the body of the guitar sitting on your picking side thigh) and wrap your picking arm around the guitar so that your hand is hovering somewhere over the strings, just bridge side of the soundhole.
As you may know, in this style of playing, the wrist does not come into contact with either the bridge or the strings. So, first of all make a loose monkey grip fist and arch your wrist slightly.
Now test your picking grip...Bend both joints of your index finger, without exerting any force to keep the finger bent. Now close your thumb over the index so that the joint above your index fingernail is protruding from behind your thumb. It should look like the end of a pick.
Strum the strings lightly with this joint, and note that the contact point where the joint departs from the sixth string is closer to the neck that when it reaches the contact point of the first string (closer now to the bridge).
Now grip your pick so that the bottom of the pick is anchored by being pushed up against the base joint of your index finger. The top of the pick should thus be protruding from behind your thumb in the same way as the index finger was before, using the index finger to rest upon.
This is the basic grip. As you know, the downstroke and the rest stroke are important features of this style. Depending upon whether you are playing lead or rhythm, the angle of the wrist will change, bending to an extreme of almost 45 degrees for fast tremolo playing. Either way, you will be striking the strings with the leading edge of the pick, working at almost 9 o'clock for lead and moving to almost 11 o'clock for rhythm or tremolo. You will notice that it is most comfortable to perform rest strokes if you dig into the strings with the end of your pick pointing slightly upwards. That way, your pick will come to rest smoothly on the next string. When strumming quickly, or as in a tremolo sequence, you will notice that by changing the angle of the wrist, and not the grip itself, the pick will be almost glancing over the strings with its leading side edge, not really picking any individual string, but all of the strings you want to play. Do not be afraid to let your knuckles drag over the strings either when picking or strumming. I will post this and if you have any other questions I will write some more! Good luck...