Wow! I love this topic. No mention of Metal picks ala Billy Gibbon’s Mythic Peso and Brian May’s Sixpense? The abraded nylon pick (with bumpy grippy dots on the faces) is apparently a key to the Edge’s sound too.
My 351 grip is rather unorthodox, I tend to strike the strings with one of the upper rounded edges with the point aiming at the inside crease of my thumb knuckle joint. I think it just slips in my grip and tendeds to stop spinning there. I have been using V-Picks for about 5 years now, and the combination of the acrylic and various abrasive edges (Vinny’s Ghost Rims) produces a very pleasing (to me) sound–similar to the grind from the ridged edges on a dime/quarter & sixpence.
Around that time, 5 or so yrs ago, I did a hacky scientific comparison between various picks using the Spectragram analysis in Adobe Audition to visualize the frequency accentuation from different pick materials–isolating the string’s vibration frequency, and looking for differences in amplitude of the frequencies.
My results generally track with yours in that harder materials tend to excite frequencies differently than softer materials.
There are so many variables: Pick angle, force, pick edge finish, pick point/tip characteristics, string response variations, how rigidly you grip the pick, pickup electronics and microphone response curves, the list goes on.
There is a surprising lack of academic study on this that I could find. The Pick is such a common interface between player and instrument, that it is surprising that there is not more info out there. Thanks Troy and CtC for taking a swipe at this topic!
If you want some help field testing, let me know!
I took some time to absorb the whole Pick Design & Function update. My 2 cents:
The depth of content in history, experiment, comparison, and practical application here is high. It’s certainly the most comprehensive and detailed study of the pick I’ve ever seen.
IMO, this stuff is fascinating and attractive to mechanics geeks, but the average player looking to improve their technique might find some of this distracting.
My biggest concern is the placement of this material in the 2nd step of the primer. I know if I learned about Chirp as a beginner, it would drive me crazy, leading to neurotic obsessing over a really small thing virtually no listener will ever notice.
It makes more sense for me to see this foray into the minutiae of pick material science be the very last thing in a Primer on guitar technique. It’s probably also why instinctively Troy created the material later than the primary pickslanting methodology - it’s an appendix, not an introduction.
I think this is a very good point. It very much has an “appendix” or “extra credit” vibe to it. Placed early in the primer, it might impede the absorbtion of more fundamental high-mileage material.
The Primer needed a beginning, and for most people, choosing a pick is the beginning. The way we see it we have two audiences for this: newbies who just got a guitar and everyone else. So we’re looking for something that will work for both crowds without being too much of a turnoff for either.
For both audiences, the hardest part of doing this was the outline. How do you boil down everything about picks into a finite number of gettable concepts that someone can get their head around? It took months, and some of these chapters were done and redone multiple times once we became more “editorial” about what things mattered and what things didn’t. We learned a ton in the process.
With a little bit of hindsight this is how I see the important takeaways for players of all experience levels:
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What basic designs are available? A total newbie strolling into Guitar Center up to the pick rack is going to be bewildered. How can we boil that down for them? Over time we decided that 351, Jazz III, and 346 are the primary designs people need to know about. Any others we left out, like the small teardrop shapes, won’t throw you for a loop once you have these “big three” in your mind.
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What is the difference between a pointy pick and round one? It’s the most important geometric concern in picking. The effect is not obvious, even to experienced players. If you don’t know what it is, you can very well have problems depending on how you hold the pick and anchor on the instrument. BUT… the answer involves edge picking. So…
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What is edge picking? It’s the most fundamental force in pick-string interaction. Many people take it for granted, or feel like it chooses them, and not the other way around. Everyone should be more conscious of this because, again, it influences super basic things like what pick you choose, and how you hold the guitar and where you place your hand / arm.
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What gauges are available and why should you care? Primary takeaway: There is an influence on sound, but having many gauges on hand is a big help when learning technique. Disclaimer: According to me!
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And finally, something about material. There are too many materials and their characteristics are too technical to cover, and probably involve actual science to really understand. But we can at least tell you what the common ones are so you have some perspective when you walk in the store. You many not care too much about chirp per se, but I find that chapter kind of fun, because everyone loves trying out stuff. By the time you watch that chapter and the others on material, you will have seen all the common materials to the point where their names are familiar you. Like Sesame Street we’re going for familiarity through repetition. You will have a sense that celluloid and nylon are common materials, felt and rubber are not, and you will have a sense of a couple categories of “fancy” materials that are available: like the imitation turtle materials, and the everlasting gobstopper materials that never abrade. Those are the two we decided were the most important aside from the more common ones.
Given all this, we still think some people might watch the first chapter on the 351, then skip all the way to the end and watch the “Choosing A Pick” chapter. Even if you do that, you’ll still have a better big-picture overview than I did after playing for ten years. Just knowing that the 351 shape is the 351 shape — hell, I don’t think I even knew it even had a name until few years ago. And I definitely didn’t know it had a backstory before Fender. I feel much more grounded in the world just by knowing that.
For the more experienced audience, my impression from our forum here is that picks are one of the things the average player knows a lot about. Until we made these chapters, I would say most people on the forum here actually knew more about picks than I did. I now feel like I can sit at the table and say something informed. There is not a pick you can show me now where I wonder how it will operate or what it will sound like. So I don’t think we’re going to lose the experienced players, because they’re already gear nerds who may like this stuff more than I do. But we can still teach them something about how these designs affect the new techniques they’re trying to acquire.
That was the thought process!
Haven’t gotten a chance to watch this yet and I won’t likely be able to for a couple weeks, but I’m curious to check this out.
I’ve definitely noticed some things feel easier with more or less edge picking, but that’s probably more of an ability thing, or at least something where you can control for it elsewhere.
The main issue as I see it is that most people have a particular way they place their arm on the guitar and they don’t change it. This basically chooses their degree of edge picking for them. Or at least, the starting point, which I call “approach angle”, i.e. the angle your forearm makes with the strings. The grip does the rest. By extending or flexing the thumb knuckle you can increase your edge picking angle or flatten it out. And again, people develop a comfort zone and don’t tend to move outside it.
If your edge picking angle is not something you are aware of, then players who use more of it will prefer pointy picks and feel like rounder ones are too dark or don’t work at all. Two players can end up with radically different ideas of how the same pick “sounds” because they are not aware of how their technique is influencing that.
Becoming more conscious of these variables can make mysterious things less mysterious, at least for me.
Question for anyone who’s watched through the new “Pick Design and Function” section — what’s your favorite chapter?
We’re thinking of putting one or two more of these videos up on YouTube, and wondering which of 'em might be best to share.
We’re always trying to strike a balance when it comes to what (and how much) we put online for free. On the one hand it takes a ton of time to make these videos and we don’t want to give away the store. But at the same time, YouTube is about the best channel we have for reaching new viewers and making folks aware of our stuff in the first place.
So the question is really a mix of “which video is most fun to watch?” + “which video might get a lot of views?” + “which video is a great entry point to Cracking the Code / Pickslanting Primer?” We have some ideas but curious what you think!
My guess is just based on novelty, the one where you guys snipped off the trailing edge of a pick might grab people’s attention.
Oh yeah, I should have mentioned, we put up the first three chapters on YouTube already (351, Edge Picking, Jazz III). That chapter with the cut pick (Edge Picking) is doing pretty well!
Thinking we’ll put up one or two others this week. Maybe “Gauge” or “Abrasion” would be good ones…
Brendan, does the new Pickslanting Primer talk about trailing edge picking at all and get into depth about it?
My criticism is not about my personal interest in the topic - but its relevance and sense of priority to newcomers in the system.
To my mind, the essential benefit of this primer is understanding the biomechanics of pickslanting and the practical benefit of economy of motion in picking technique. Preceding this information with 2+ hours of microscopic detail on pick material frequency response curves and the history of pick design appears to detract from the course focus here.
I think this is valuable information. It’s certainly the most detailed analysis of pick material and design characteristics outside of the Dunlop research labs probably.
My question is really about if that level of detail on the physical aspect of the tool is beneficial to introduce before the main discussion on how to actually use the tool.
I hear you! But the intent isn’t to be microscopic. It’s to introduce players to the five or so big points I mentioned above. I think they are important. If the new material does that, it succeeds. If it distracts, then it fails! I’m willing to admit this is a possibility, since again, we don’t really know yet.
My best guess is that experienced players can’t be distracted because they already know a lot of this, and they also find it entertaining. For newbie type players, have we lost them with this presentation? Or do they also find it entertaining, and do they walk away knowing what a 351 is, and what the difference between a pointy pick and a round one? Do they feel empowered when they walk into Guitar Center and look at the pick rack?
We need to talk to some newbies! I don’t know how many of those we actually have yet, but as soon as we do, we’ll try and get some feedback.
We do have a trailing edge chapter in the “pick grip” section:
And we explain right up front in the new edge picking video what we mean by the terms “leading” and “trailing”. You can watch that in its entirety right here:
Are you already playing this way? If so, what else specifically are you looking to learn about it? If you’re not playing this way, and you want to try it, you do get some closeup shots of what that looks like, which should be enough to at least try it.
I think the greatest value of the new stuff is showing you all the grips, close up, in plain English, in a way that is easy to understand. This matters because I think grip is one of those things where people don’t know how to describe their own grip, don’t know how it differs from other grips, and as a result feel a little bit like a hostage to the one they are using. They fall into it, they never change it, and they just assume, this is how I play. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Over the last four years or so I have basically learned every major grip type to the point where YouTube commenters have started asking how come I don’t hold the pick the way I used to. I can. And I do, just to make sure I still can. I just have been using a trigger-style grip more often recently so I can get good at it. Our business is teaching players how these things work and it’s not enough to know that they exist — I need to know how to do them in a way that feels natural.
I think there’s an additional benefit of specifically trying to learn multiple grips, in that I think it can help with learning picking motions. Trying the same (or similar) motion multiple ways really drives home what is common to all of them, and what it feels like to do the motion itself correctly. There’s a whole chapter in the new wrist motion section — Chapter 2 — specifically on this topic, switching through the three most common grip types, and the arm positions that pair with them, to attempt the same picking motion:
Hello Troy!
Yes, I do prefer trailing edge picking. - I can hold the pick regular too, but I always find myself coming back to trailing edge. I find it very comfortable to play with and I combine it with a lot of legato to help my playing.
What I wanted to learn about it was if it is conducive for a double escaped type mechanic or does it lend itself better towards a downward escaped motion?
The greatest trailing edge picker I know of is Shawn Lane and he was definitely a playing who used the same mechanics as EJ and Yngwie. I have the Strunz and Farah interview and, from what I remember, Jorge Strunz also has his pick strokes escaping on the downstrokes?
You can totally use a trailing edge grip to do a double escape type picking motion. For example!
George Benson also has a bunch of signature phrases where he goes back and forth between two strings rapidly, sometimes with string skip in there like this:
And Shawn Lane has that fives pattern with pure alternate:
Since it’s five notes and alternate picking, the string changes flip flop, so the first pattern connects to the second with a downstroke, skipping a string in the process. We can’t really see what’s going on here but knowing the way these things work, I would guess that one pickstroke follows a slightly different path to do the string skip and get back to the top. Maybe it swipes, maybe it doesn’t. I’m not too worried — at his speeds you’d never know anyway.
Point being that I wouldn’t worry too much about which direction you need to escape. It’s clearly possible. My best advice with any of these things is to go for it at “realistic” speeds with whatever fretboard shapes you’re most excited to play. Hit whatever strings you need to at first. Getting motions happening fluidly at or near a realistic speed first is the quickest way to have an a-ha moment and accidentally do something right.
Cool selection of trailing edge videos Troy! Out of these, the only one that demonstrates double escapes beyond reasonable doubt is your video! In the Benson one I can clearly hear some additional string noise, however it still sounds cool - in fact that 1976 improvisation is one of the scariest guitar performances of all times. And as you said, for Shawn Lane the question of swiping is a moot point, what he does sounds killer (and mostly unattainable 
) anyway.
I just wanted to say that I think this new section is incredible! As an experienced player, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and just the knowledge acquired has already changed my playing for the better. I’ve also spent about a hundred bucks in all sorts of picks! I was a die-hard Fender 351 Heavy celluloid user. I’ve now found that learning to use as many pick shapes and gauges as possible (and grips, which is harder) is a fantastic tool for improving my playing. So - thanks @Troy!
The only thing I miss is some sort of table summary with all the pick characteristics and their influence in sound. I don’t know it that’s something that could be added later on, but it would be a great reference.
Thanks for wading through all that! I think the goal here wasn’t really to be super comprehensive but to at least give a few examples of how material influences sound, how gauge influences sound and so on. I’m sure there are aspects of this that we left out — it’s a surprisingly complicated topic.
We also want to make sure that new players don’t get lost in the sauce. If a new person can come away with some idea of what the three or four most common pick shapes are, and how things like pointyness influences sound, then we’ve done our job. Still not sure if we’ve done that, and we probably need to hear from some more beginners to really know for sure.
I think it’s THE most comprehensive study ever done on picks!!! 
Not sure how a beginner would feel about all the material though. Maybe you can compile a “highlight reel” for beginners, make it less than 5 minutes so they get started on the right path and can revisit the material later when they already have more experience.