Are strumming on an electric or acoustic guitar?

Hey Pat, I’ve moved from a medium gauge pick to a heavy the last several months. It seems better for me to control going from a soft strum to digging in on a lead. Kinda like finessing the throttle on that bike through the curves! 🙂

I use a fairly thick pick and will tuck it in my fingers if I want to strum softly and use my thumb or 1St finger

The picks I use are pretty small (Dunlop ultex jazz III) and you can easily angle them for a softer feel or flip them round so your strumming with the rounded end.

I find the thin picks sound clicky and don’t personally like them

It depends on a few things, how you hold the pick, how much of the pick you use, the angle of the pick when attacking the strings and where at the soundhole you are playing the strings with your pick.

I recently talked to a pro guitarist and he gave me the advice not to become to fixated on any particular kind of pick. I may have to borrow one at a gig and if the other guitarists don’t have one of those that I got accustomed to, it could distract me and my playing could suffer. While I do see some reason in this, I disagree. Trying out different picks is fun and interesting. Different materials and thicknesses make different sounds. Therefore, I am through a lot of different materials and thicknesses now. I don’t play well with the thin ones, for exactly the reason you quoted: Harder to aim and shoot for the right string when moving from strumming to picking. Everything medium (which I would put around 0.73 to 0.80) and harder works rather well.