That’s awesome. Marty’s ES-345 is from the future, and his pick grip is from some other dimension!
Huh. Fry, that’s actually not all THAT different than the way I hold the pick, too - same pointner finger orientation with the pick braced against the side of a curled finger, but maybe a hair less thumb angle (maybe 60 instead of 90 degrees). I’m at work so this is off memory, but I do recall previously noticing that I tend to work the angle of the thumb joint a little bit while playing, though I haven’t really put the time it to see if there’s anything systematic about the way I do it, and if it’s something that’s evolved due to a specific playing situation.
Tangental aside - that’s the thing that probably gets to me the most about this site. I’m naturally a pretty analytical guy, I’m a financial analyst by trade, am pretty curious, and once a question gets my attention I’ll spend a LOT of time getting to the bottom of it. At the same time, I also love guitar, and spend a lot of time practicing. Yet, there are so many things about the guitar - something I care greatly about being good at - that I’ve literally just never put any serious thought into figuring out. Like, I’ve always suspected there must be something I’m doing wrong with my picking because it’d always been such a struggle for me, but somehow I never actually sat down and tried to reason through what the challenges were. And, even having watched Troy do just that, and even after correctly identifying this little wind-up mechanic in my motion that struck me as weird only to be told this is textbook two-way pickslanting, and all these other little breakthroughs like that (and seriously, my picking has improved more in the last year than in the prior five, probably), I cann still find myself noticing something unusual I’m doing, noting it… And then just leaving it at that, and spending exactly zero time trying to figure out why I was doing it, lol.
Man. I guess it’s probably because I tend to do a lot of improvising and for me guitar is a NON-analytic escape from a very analytic day job… But I gotta get a lot more structured about this stuff, lol. I’m just shooting myself in the foot.
I’m down with that, and that is ultimate the goal here — to make the information as simple and accessible as we can, so that the guitar experience can be mostly non-analytical, the way it was when we all first started. That’s the way playing feels best to me, honestly, and that’s also the way learning works best — when it happens stealthily over time to where you don’t really notice.
I wouldn’t feel too guilty about getting structured or disciplined. Most things that people do are fine, and don’t need to be changed, specifically. It’s more about knowing why they work and making sure the stuff you’re trying to play fits that.
While this is of course all true (not just the part I quoted above), this seems like an opportunity where a little bit of research and structured thinking - you know, my usual problem solving approach, haha - would reap some pretty major dividends.
Eh, the important thing is to still have a sense of humor about it, at the end of the day. 
Seen as I’m a total noob here I must ask, where do I start? I’m a basic member I believe so don’t have access to everything. Do I ideally subscribe and start with the pickslanting primer and go through it all? Sorry, just a little lost here!
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Hey, welcome! Yes, if you’re looking to dive into our technique tutorial, the Pickslanting Primer is the place to start, covering a range of important technical topics, from picks and grip to specific picking motions:
We suggest experimenting a bit and choosing a motion that feels comfortable, then practicing that for a bit, trying to get it consistent at speed. With a subscription you can check out our seminars + interviews as well for further musical inspiration depending on your interests.
Once you have a handle on the core concepts you can also post to #technique-critique here on the forum if you’d like to share video of your playing for feedback. Of course any other questions / suggestions always welcome too! Lots of great conversations here on all kinds of topics.
If you’d like to get a better sense of our material before signing up, our whole site functions as a kind of table of contents — from the homepage at https://troygrady.com/ you can click through to navigate to the various sections of the site and see a listing of what’s included.
We do have some free videos scattered throughout the site (anything with a teal outline). And if you want to see all our free stuff in one place, you can check out our YouTube channel and subscribe for updates when we post new free videos.
Hope that helps. We do have a simple “getting started” page here too, definitely open to suggestions if you think there’s more we should add here:
If you still have questions or anything we can help clarify further just let us know!
That’s great Brendan, thank you!
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