For the longest time, I had a feeling that I use a strong amount of finger motion. I would notice that if I would try to pick “just from the wrist” and lock everything else, my playing would be way off. In videos of myself playing the hardest lines I’ve done, either slowly or at speed, I could see my fingers doing some kind of action. I took some time to try and capture what I think is going on.
Motion while holding a pick:
Without a pick:
I think what helps is to think of your entire fingers (minus thumb) as a single unit, keeping them together using very light pressure. Here’s a more exaggerated idea of the motion:
When I would cruise Internet 2.0 forums looking for details on finger motion, I would read about index / thumb picking, without any additional detail or info. I like my approach for 2 reasons:
- Keeping the fingers together feels more natural than trying to isolate just the index finger, at least to me. I’m sure someone like @Tom_Gilroy can explain why it might feel easier for all the fingers to perform the same motion together as opposed to isolated.
- I feel like in my approach, the thumb is just “along for the ride.” I use enough pressure to keep the pick on the side of my index finger, but I don’t try to flex / extend it in coordination. However, I think for string changes / skips, I DO think of my thumb and either extend or flex it more than usual to move a good distance.
For fun, I was brainstorming an idea for a “tapping test”:
With a few minutes to think, that’s the best that I came up with: using your thumb to lightly hold some sort of “implement” in place (like this box).
Hopefully some of you will give this a try and give me feedback, and it would be cool if others discovered that they did this all along as well!