One of my favorite Pickslanting Primer tips: change your pick and grip!

Playing Technique
#1

I wanted to share my favorite tip (so far) from the Pickslanting Primer: try a lot of picks and pick grips!

I was already a fan of having different picks for different sounds, especially for studio recordings. However, I think most players (including myself) try to find a pick that’s “the one”, and use it exclusively, to the point where they feel insecure when using a different pick.

The chapter about picks made me rethink this approach. Besides learning all that fun stuff about what makes a pick sound different, learning how to play the same stuff with vastly different picks has improved my technique tremendously!

Something similar with the chapter about grips: instead of thinking that one particular grip is “the one” or is “technically correct”, I realised that ALL pick grips work and you can find an example of a top player that uses each grip. It’s harder for me to switch grips than to switch picks, but it’s having the same effect on my learning.

So… what’s your experience? Have you tried this?

3 Likes
#2

Yeah, even though I have a few picks I favor, I still like to change it up once in a while. Plus I think it’s good once in a while to try to play difficult stuff with a “standard” 351 shaped pick, since you might find yourself in a situation where that’s the only pick available.

One thing I’ve discovered is that even though I love the way Tortex feels, and I like its tone for a lot of things, for fast stuff with a shallow attack, they just don’t sound bright enough to me.

On the grip front, one of the biggest things to me is the difference between keeping the last joint on the index finger curved, versus keeping it straight. Among other thing, the “straight” approach can allow you to still reach the strings, even with an extremely supinated arm setup.

2 Likes