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Just out of curiosity…. do most people out there play with a pick, or fingerstyle? I always thought that most everyone that played guitar used a pick until I started checking all of these guitar videos that are all over the web and now I see that there are FAR more fingerstyle players than I realized existed.
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I think it really just depends on the song and the style of music that you like to play. I play with a flatpick most of the time, but I play fingerstyle on a few Beatles covers and Christmas songs that I have in my song bag. I also have a few basic travis picking patterns that I use when trying to play an impromptu cover of a pop song.
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To plectrum or not to plectrum ….. that is the question …………………
I wondered too and discovered that when my fellow guitar buddies came over and then left I was always missing picks and the reverse is true in that when I left a Buddie’s place I seemed to have ” acquired ” a new pick ………………..
Well after much thought I went ” pick-less ” at least 7 years ago and I have been playing guitar since January 1999 . Don’t miss them at all . I keep my nails relatively short except for my thumb nail . In doing this my fingerstyle playing really improved much to my surprise and liking .
I use a nail polish that has industrial diamond dust and that’s it .
I have to use that stuff because steel strings and the brass windings on nylon 4 through 6 acoustic classical wear off too much of the top surface on my thumb nail and it hurts !
I also coat the thumb , index and middle fingers with 4 coats and it lasts a week the ring and pinky fingers get 2 coasts –
– only because mother nature for whatever reason(s) made those 2 fingernails much thicker than the others ? . The nail hardener is cheaper in the long run annually than buying picks .
Who knows I may consider to use them both in time – – one never says never I have learned 🙂
One observation to be noted :
When I used a pick the sound of the note sounded O . K . to me and I didn’t think twice about it till I was at it on fingerstyle a while and then one day I used a pick just out of general curiosity and realized a big difference in the ” tone ” of the strings as far as the plectrum sound was thin in comparison to my thumb’s sound , my thumb’s callous is a meaty little knob and it grabs more meat off the string as it hits it and …….that’s what I personally found out and that’s a good thang ! Fingers do have a chunkier sound and more tactile control of the string’s sound character as you shape what you want to hear . Nuances are more controllable too it seems to me .
Sincerely
Hurricane Ramon
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i’ve always been a flat picker. i tried learning to finger pick a few times over the yrs, cause i loved the sound it produced but i never had the patience/decipline it took to master it. I always fell back into what was familiar- easy. Recently i stumbled across ActiveMelody and started following Brians’ finger picking lesson( thank u Brian ) and it’s finally starting to take! Brian was a little to advanced for me, so i’m following a fellow( Gary Shepard ) on Youtube and between the two of them i’m progressing nicely. It’s breathing new life into my playing, which had grown stale. I guess u can teach an old dog new tricks.
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When I first started playing guitar many years ago I used a flat pick. Around 1970 when I picked up the open back banjo style I used a technique called frailing or known as clawhammer. I guess I didn’t pay alot of attention to the teacher as my right hand fingers were in a mess. I quit and started guitar picking with a flat pick. I continued to use many different style picks from very light to the triangle tortise type hard ones. At this time I use a fairly hard pick.
I finger pick on acoustic doing some blues and and travis picking stuff. Also on some tunes finger picks come in handy, especially when you rake the strings, twisting the thumb down and fingers up. I would love to use nothing but bare fingers as Derek Trucks does but other things stop me. I do hand brushed pinstriping and I can’t have callused fingers. I had a teacher who got me into using
thumb and finger picks. It was odd at first. I think its how you feel at the time. I have seen people use bare fingers and fly!!!!!
The only problem I have using finger picks is when you have to get new ones, such as different brands. Its bad. Its like no control at all. Another thing is to use flatwound strings as they are easier on the fingers too. A softer tone too.
Fresnojohns
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