Ok, now I got it what you guys meant. I started to experiment with pick angle, so I chose another angle and… it rotates to its usual position. I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or a bad one. From one point of view it means that my usual position is pretty stable. On the other hand, how am I supposed to experiment with pick angles if my pick is resisting?
The only way I see it is to change my hand position as well which I don’t want to do to.
Do you still have the issue with normal picks?
I wish I had the answer, but I’m still experimenting myself.
I made a discovery by accident today. While trying to figure something else out, I made a slight adjustment to the pad side grip and it seemed to help stabilise it a little. It’s not perfect, and certain picking motions (inside picking!) will cause my pick point to move a little which then makes picking on one string hard as the upstrokes catch.
I probably use more edge picking than I should be, which means my muting of string noise isn’t the best. However, any time I’ve tried to lower my hand, it tends to migrate back to my usual position. So for now I think I’ll stick with it and can always use tips of the fretting hand fingers to help mute adjacent strings.
That’s gone a bit off topic! But I guess experimenting with grip can help, or at least I think it can… I’ve only just made a discovery, accidentally and not had much time to practice with it yet. It’s difficult to describe, but what I wrote down for myself was “slightly more pad than side, straight(ish) index finger” I realise that will help no one lol
I don’t know if you’ve tried this but I like to press the rounded corner of the pick into the crease of my index finger. I find this makes the pick much more stable as it can’t really rotate anywhere. I hold the pick with the tip of my thumb but this also works with the more traditional flat thumb “trigger” grip. Obviously this is a very pick-dependant approach. I’m not sure it would work as well for a standard-sized Jazz 3.
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Hey, I’ve not tried this grip before, but I do remember trying the trigger style grip and although I liked it for lead playing, I found some issues with rhythm playing and arpeggiating chords. I found with the trigger grip, it was harder to get the other fingers away from the strings.
A couple of things I’m trying at the moment. I’m trying to lower my entire hand as I feel I’m not able to effectively mute string nose as not enough of the hand is in contact with the lower strings. I’m a little unsure if I should be starting with speed on this as I find the hand will tend to migrate back to where it usually is if I do…
I’m also finding, when I attempt to play fast, the pick gets chocked up to the point that if I keep going, there is no pick left to pick with, now it’s just the index finger and thumb in contact with the strings.
With regards to the fingers being near the strings, I tend to keep the lower three fingers tucked in for lead playing and fan them out for more rhythmic/strumming type playing as it frees up the wrist to move a lot more. But then again, I’m far from the world’s greatest rhythm player.
That’s one thing I found difficult with the trigger style grip, more so than with the extended trigger, was fanning out the other fingers from strumming and rhythm techniques. I find it difficult to fan them out and get them out of the way without affecting the bend in my index finger. It looks like you might be using a slightly extended trigger?
If by extension you mean the position of the three spare fingers then yes, they are slightly extended. If my hand is tightly balled up into a fist, the fingers get in the way as you describe. The three spare fingers are at least as open as my index finger which itself is held pretty loosely. The last bone of these fingers is pretty much parallel to the plane of the strings when I play lead parts, just hovering above them.
For me having the fingers quite loose like this offers a number of advantages:
- I can easily jump into hybrid picking without a large hand adjustment.
- The same goes for tapping with the second and (occastionally) third finger.
- I can use these fingers with my thumb to help muting to an extent by creating a “tunnel” around the string I want to ring out - although most muting still comes from the heel of the hand.
Thanks for the response.
Seems there are some advantages to the picking grip you are using that I wouldn’t have thought of.
I may give this a try and see if I can make it work. Only way to find out if I can make it work is give it a try!
Hopefully it works out for you. I can’t promise results because everyone has different hands but it’s worked fairly well for me so far.
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Hi, im new here but i saw your post online and joined to see if i can help you and others with pick issues!
Try a new pick called “The Pick Plus”. it has a horizontal slot to create skin to skin contact and it prevents rotation with its grip space and Plus handle.
There are three models- Standard, Pro and Elite. I’d recommend the Pro or Elite model for you since you are confident otherwise in your grip. Look for those on the website.
ThePickPLus
Any questions or feedback, let me know!
My experience with this problem involved a downward pickslant position combined with a long ingrained string-hopping habit.
As I performed the upstroke, my muscle memory would make my hand ever-so-slightly push inwards (or ‘bounce’) towards the guitar’s body.
Combined with the DWPS position, this meant that the trailing edge of the pick made blunt contact with the string in a way that shoved the pick point towards the headstock. Even a single botched upstroke could cause a radical pick rotation.
In short, the problem wasn’t the pick itself or the grip I was using. It was string-hopping sneaking up on me.
I hope this is helpful to someone.
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Hey thanks for the response.
That’s interesting, how did you manage to diagnose the problem? It seems like something that would be quite hard to spot. When I play in USX (DWPS), my pick point is never straight, it goes slightly positive (towards headstock). I don’t mind this so much though, but if it goes the other way I’m in trouble as it feels like the pick is catching in the strings and then gets pushed further and further until there is no pick left to pick with. I’m making a lot of technique alterations right now though so maybe in time and practice, I’ll figure it all out.
Just stumbled across this thread - I had horrible problems with the pick rotating while playing for decades, until I discovered CTC. CTC inspired/guided me to fix a lot of the inefficiencies in my picking motion, and once I did that, the pick rotation disappeared completely. Its not that it got better and I gradually overcame it - it just disappeared, it never happens now, and I never even have to think about it.
I’m convinced that unwanted pick slippage is a symptom of inefficient technique, not a problem on its own, simply because I’ve never heard a pro player complain about this issue. They’ll say they still struggle with unwanted tension, or they aren’t as accurate as they’d like to be sometimes, but they’ll never say “oh, yeah, i constantly fight to keep the pick in position”.
I don’t know how to explain this mechanically. My best guess is that efficient picking technique is symmetrical with respect to up and down strokes, and that this symmetry causes equal and opposite pick-rotating forces over time. That is, if the down stroke pushes the pick out of position in one direction, the up stroke does the opposite, and the average effect is thus zero. But who knows. If someone wanted to post slow motion magnet video of pick-rotation occurring, it could be very interesting to see where and when it occurs.
Anyway, enough speculation. My advice to you is to ignore the pick rotation and focus on improving the efficiency of your picking, and see if it doesn’t go away on its own.
One more thought: A common response to this problem is “you’re gripping too tight”, and less often, “you’re gripping too loose”. I’m almost certain this is not the answer. Why? Because if I intentionally over- or under-grip the pick, it doesn’t rotate at all. If I grip reeeeeeeally loosely, the pick will gradually retreat into my grip, but it doesn’t rotate while doing so.
Thanks for that very detailed response!
I’m actually going through the primer again as I’ve got certain things backwards and there has been a big update in it since I last went through it. I am almost certain now that it is down to inefficient motion and not how I hold the pick or what type I use. At an early stage of the primer, I already see that I’ve been trying to force a primary motion to work, when it seems something else actually comes a little more natural to me.
Dumbass me created another thread about almost the same issue, forgetting about this thread and how it’s basically the same issue 
Maybe it could be merged…?
This is a problem I battled with for nearly 30 years. In my case the diagnosis was simple, although overcoming the problem took a while. And it was thanks to CTC that I realised my problem - the episode with the old video of Troy picking with the trailing edge. I looked down and low and behold that’s how I was picking. I would start off fine but gradually my forefinger would extend until eventually I was just pinching the pick between the flat of my straight finger and my thumb, so there was really nothing providing support and the pick could turn. I immediately changed to a leading edge picking motion. At first it was hard because overcoming decades of habit takes work, but after some months it became natural.
For the last 5 or 6 years I’ve had very few problems with the pick turning. Occasionally my forefinger wants to unfold and my grip begins to slip, but at least I now know how to correct it.
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Thanks for sharing.
I think my issues may stem from just not having certain picking motions right just yet. I just began going through the primer again recently and some things I misunderstood the first time round. Also, it’s expanded quite a bit since the first time I went through it.
I suspect that a combination of things could be causing it, not having motions correct yet which would also mean that my natural instinct to put pressure on certain parts of the pick will need to develop as I correct these motions. Hopefully that will do the trick anyway… We shall see in the months to come.
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I noticed that my pick doesn’t turn at all because of symmetry. It is absolutely normal to the string, and by this I mean if you drew a line through the axis of symmetry of the pick (a line that goes exactly through the point and then exactly through the middle of the top) this hits the string at exactly 90 degrees. I put grip pressure centered along this same line as well. My picks (Dunlop Flow 2.0mm) have tiny dots as well to enhance friction. So, my upstroke and downstroke are indistinguishable from the perspective of the pick, hence it can’t have a preferred direction of rotation. I am guessing that you hit the string where this angle is less than 90 degrees. Hopefully this makes sense, but I drew a picture in case it helps one to understand. Does this help? 
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For a different perspective from @kgk, I have the point of the tip more forward. Definitely something to experiment with.
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