Avoiding Injury with Faster Picking

Playing Technique
#22

I’ll post another video, but I worked on my picking from watching Jimmy Bruno videos and working through his picking book years ago. When I pick towards the thicker bass strings of the guitar (towards the low E), I change the orientation of my hand–sort of like Jimmy Bruno–to an upward pick slant. That JB is a musical technician of the highest caliber, and the one lesson I had with him left me in stitches trying to catch up and… from his ENDLESS humor. I’m trying to retain some floating and some resting to get flexibility.

The one criticism I have about Troy Grady’s proper technique is the adherence to picking with a dramatic leading edge. Depending on pick thickness (I use a 2 mm Blue Chip) and the gauge of your string, you could drastically alter the tone and definition of your sound–especially when playing without any effects. I try to play with a little edge, while maintaining the downward or upward pick slant.

#23

I think all of Troy’s lessons or examples are about showing whats possible and highlighting how high level playing is pulled off on this awkward and unintuitive instrument we all play, and not a set rule, if you want to have great mechanics at high speed then Troy has shown how to do that, though at slower speeds there is a lot of wiggle room.

1 Like
#24

Where did you see that? I’ve gone through the primer and I’ve never come across anything that suggested you need to use steep edge picking…

Some edge picking helps if using a pointy pick. There is a video about that somewhere, but nothing that says you have to use a large degree of edge picking, as far as I’ve seen anyway.

2 Likes