I’m talking about the string you are playing. There has to be a gap there otherwise the string would make no sound. So I’m not sure why it would matter if the gap is super small versus some larger amount. Whatever amount, you have to create it by some aspect of your form that you memorize by feel. Why does it matter that skin of the fingers is super duper close to the string? It’s clear that this is not necessary just by the wide variety of players out there who don’t do that.
Ok, I get your meaning.
It’s certainly not necessary, but I do feel that having contact on the adjacent strings, coupled with a small amount of pick showing from the grip is certainly a viable means of achieving the goal. Certainly something that can be tried if a person feel they haven’t developed control over their depth yet.
The problem I have with the old “choke up” advice we all got in the '80s is that it’s totally illogical. People usually suggest this as a way of reducing the amount of pick that goes below the string. But it doesn’t do that at all. That amount is relatively consistent across the players we’ve filmed, big exposure or little. The video makes this very clear. All choking up does is reduce the amount of pick above the string, bringing the skin of the fingers closer to the strings and making it more likely they will interfere.
In the last Martin Miller interview, he was using so little exposure in a few examples that every time he played a note on the D string, the side of his thumb actually played a note on the A string. It was like Scotty Anderson’s double stop technique. I forget if I cut out those examples or left them in. But I was like, where the hell is that note coming from?
So yes you can use this as a muting technique, but there is definitely increased risk of unwanted contact too. If you’re playing one of those “quiet” styles like fusion where all the strings are muted and locked down, you may get away with it. If you’re playing bluegrass, you’re going to need more airspace so multiple strings can ring.
Everything has its place.
This would seem to me to be more of an indicator that the “choke up” isn’t necessary as a means to controlling depth, rather than indicating that it’s categorically not a means of controlling depth. Maybe I’m wrong here?
This has me wondering about something: The pick could be seen as a lever to the hand. Less exposure would mean a shorter lever, hence possibly reducing the feeling of the hand being turned by the strings, or the feeling of the pick trying to move in the grip.
After a quick look at the YouTube video, I can see how this would happen with his crosspicking form.
Absolutely, I’ve definitely had some issues with unwanted contact from the picking hand. My primary crosspicking form doesn’t have this contact because it’s not so close to the strings, and my default picking method has the adjacent lower string damped by both the bottom or side of the palm as well as that thumb contact (in addition to fretting hand dampening), so there’s safeguard against that unwanted ringing.
I really only have this problem now with my trailing edge grip where when I’m picking over the bridge pickup, and I’m learning to protect against it by lifting the form slightly.
I’m pretty much coming from that exact perspective.
I can see that. When I play an acoustic guitar I play fingerstyle pretty much exclusively. If I were to use a pick I’d be using my crosspicking form.
Totally. Everything is a compromise.
I can definitely understand the frustration with the idea of “less pick” being a universal solution to all picking problems.
Fair.
But how do you feel about using more pick on the string for accents and maybe even more aggressive rhythm playing? Paul Gilbert specifically talks about this in Intense Rock 2. Watch from 5:05 to 11:30. At around 8:00 he literally talks about “using more of the pick” to hit the strings and “lowering the pick into the strings.”
Also, it makes sense that rest stroking can be optional, but I would like to think there are some lines where it would be more desirable to rest stroke. For instance, in Malmsteen or Gambale lines where there is a mix of sweeping and alternate picking. Since the swept notes are rest strokes by default, I would argue that it would be in the players best interest to rest stroke the alternate picked notes. I feel like using rest strokes in lines with a mix of alternate picking and sweep picking creates a more rhythmic and tonally consistent sound.
For sure, I use rest strokes when sweeping to maintain timing. I’ve talked about that fairly extensively in our lessons, like the Primer forearm sequence, for example:
I don’t really think the rest stroke has anything to do with the sound, since it only happens after the note has been played. For example, a common situation where you might encounter a rest stroke is when you hit a note really hard with a trapped pickstroke. In such a case you’re almost guaranteed to rest stroke. When you do this, you will hear that tonal difference, but this is because you hit it hard, not because of the rest stroke per se. You can get the same snappy sound even on the high E string where there is no string to rest on.
On the flip side, just because you rest stroke doesn’t mean it has to sound loud and snappy. I can sweep very delicately and still rest stroke. This is just me letting the pick contact the next string on purpose. The note sounds totally different from a hard Gypsy downstroke. But it rests all the same.
So in general I would try not to overthink the rest stroke thing. When you’re just alternate picking, I doubt you can consciously control when this happens all the time anyway. If you’re hitting notes really hard all the time, you’ll probably rest stroke. If you don’t like that sound, or if your playing feels unsmooth because you’re putting too much force into it, back off a little and see if things feel smoother. Eventually you want to have control over your dynamics and smoothness so that you are the one who chooses which notes are loud and which are soft.
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Also, keep in mind that what Paul is talking about is not the same as a rest stroke. The amount of pick that contacts the string you are playing is not the same as the amount of pick that comes to rest against the next string. This is very clear under the camera. When you look at my playing close up, you can see that the amount of pick that hits the string can be small, and the amount that rests against the next string can be large. This only makes sense. The pick is following a diagonal path into the strings, so it’s going to be lower by the time it reaches the next string.
Of course, to get an accented note, you can change the amount of pick on the string you are playing. But again, that’s not a rest stroke. Also, keep in mind that using more pick is not the only way to get a louder attack. You can grip harder, so there is less flop. If you typically use grip flop, as I often do, then gripping more tightly will prevent that and make a louder note. And you can also use more of an escape stroke, to reduce the angle of attack. Meaning, you pick away from the guitar, so the pick gets less grip. That’s what Mike Stern does in this example where he plays the same blues phrase twice, once loud and once soft:
Lots of ways to do this, it’s a cool question.
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This interests me. I’ve always had a pretty firm grip on my pick. My (quite possibly flawed logic) was that the pick would always be exactly where I wanted it to be and not throw me off at the higher speeds. If it flopped at all, it could be just ever so slightly in the wrong spot and not hit the string at the precise instant I wanted it to. Hand sync issues and unevenness followed. I also grew up on John Petrucci’s Rock Discipline and strove for tiny movements, heh. Also, a lot of the rock playing I’ve done over the years was in a metal context. The producer my band used, take after take, would holler at us ‘Play it like a man!!!’. He’d refuse to keep takes where we picked less than nearly breaking our strings lol. Cool story, he also recorded/produced Andy Wood’s band Down From Up back when Andy was just a local guy. I had the opportunity to meet him in person in 2005. Super nice guy, and even back then he was killing it! I got to see his band one evening after we were finished tracking during a session. Man he was amazing live! But I digress…
A couple months ago during some tremolo practice I suddenly stopped using so much pick on the string and I felt this smoothness I’d never experienced. This easing up on the pick depth has been a big help to me recently, since I’m only ~6 months into overhauling my playing after finding CtC. In reading other posts and watching your playing more closely @Troy, I’ve indeed noticed your pick flops more than mine does. I notice, when I can ‘get it’, that a slightly looser hold gives me a similar smoothness to the shallower pick depth. Or at least that’s how it feels to me. I’m definitely using much bigger movements now that I know it’s ok to do that lol! So I don’t get the ‘out of sync’ issue I’d faced back in the day when I loosened up a little on the grip
Sorry for all the fluff here. My big question is pick grip and tone. I love your tone. It always sounds so aggressive and full. Any comments on how you achieve this with a loose grip and shallow pick depth? Maybe it’s just dogma I’ve bought into that I associate more pick on the string and a tighter grip with the aggressive sound.
I’m not sure any of this stuff really has much of an effect on “tone”, per se. Tone is pick choice, edge picking, pickups, amp, that kind of thing. I don’t know which tone(s) you’re referring to but odds are good that if you were in the room that day and used my pick and guitar with roughly the same edge picking, through the same rig, you’d have pretty much exaclty the same “tone”.
Edit: I say this also because in the edge picking feature we tested the effect of how hard you pick and the tone is the same whether you pick softly or loudly:
Ergo, whatever pick and edge picking you use, I think you’re getting the same “tone” more or less regardless of how hard you play. If by tone we mean frequency response. Which is how I use the term.
Thanks, I get what you’re saying. And yeah, frequency response is what I mean. Probably a combination of my classical training [where tone is largely created by the hands, with a huge portion of that being in the way the strings are contacted by the fingernails/flesh and varying pressure too. 2 players can sound drastically different if they play the same instrument in that realm] and reading interviews (legends???) in Guitar World where techs would tell stories of guys on tour together playing through each other’s rigs at sound check or what not. They’d claim that Eddie Van Halen (or whoever) would still sound like themselves when playing through different people’s rigs. Or the inverse, where a tech could play the star’s rig at sound check and sound nothing like the star. Totally circumstantial and not scientific, I know 
Just what I was brought up thinking. So I equate tone with an individual more than gear, at least partially. It’s probably nonsense and I’m probably conflating a bunch of things.
Thanks for the response!
Yes the story about Ted Nugent and EVH swapping rigs has been repeated forever. But I always interpreted that to mean that Eddie sounds like Eddie because he plays Eddie licks. And no amount of Ted Nugent is going to sound like him. Vito Bratta on the other hand, playing almost any guitar, kind of sounds like Eddie — because, well, he plays Eddie licks!
In other words, when people say tone they don’t really mean tone, they mean style. The tone is some amount of pick attack, but mainly the gear.
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That is an interesting take/interpretation. I like it!