Thumb picks?

toddg

Is it possible to play in the style using a thumb pick, like tommy emmanuel uses.

Can you successfully play correct La Pompe. Any thoughts?

everett

the man!

easy enough to grip a thumb pick like a regular pick. if you've ever dropped a $30 pick while playing and it falls into a black hole, you'll never want that to happen again.

Buco

Richard Smith plays with one. He's a fingerstyle player but him, Tommy and Joscho play Gypsy Jazz together.

I'm sure there's a video of them three on YT somewhere...

These three just put out an album together though

https://youtu.be/MJfOAzb6Rjk

MirekTimPatek

The flatpick downstroke of La Pompe can be emulated by thumbpick downstroke. The question is how to emulate that quick upstroke before the first beat downstroke.

My solution is to use banjo set of fingerpicks (thumbpick plus two fingerpicks on index and middle finger). With this setting, the first beat downstroke is in fact the combination of thumbpick downstroke and middle fingerpick upstroke (one may call it a pinch), both played exactly on the beat. And here is the secret: the upstroke sound is made by the index finger, which uppicks split second before the middle finger, creating the desired sound of quick upstroke.

The second beat downstroke is then just plain downstroke with the thumbpick. 

King_Cardboard

I think the one thing that occasionally makes it tough for the up stroke is that many thumb picks are beveled a very particular way for finger style playing, if you adjust the bevel it could be easier