Thumb angle change while picking - follow-up from the Grip thread

[Drew]

I figured I’d spin this into its own thread rather than pulling that one further off-topic.

@Drew

Huh. Fry, that’s actually not all THAT different than the way I hold the pick, too - same pointer 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.

I spent some time over the weekend just jamming out and watching my thumb, and then some close-up filming. First, my memory wasn’t really accurate, and my “default” picking grip when I’m actually holding a guitar and getting ready to play is more of a flat/almost hitchhiker’s thumb. However, I DO work the angle a little while I play.

It SEEMS like I’m doing two things:

1. Most immediately, as my thumb angle increases, I’m adding a bit more edge picking. However, I think this is purely a side effect to…
2. …when I started looping a three string three-note per string scale pattern, the thumb angle seemed to increase on the G string, and flatten back out on the high E (when I was playing on the top three strings).

In other words, I suspect this is related to string tracking more than anything about the thicker string “needing” more edge picking, and that by angling my thumb a little more I’m kind of pulling the pick a little closer to the lower string, and then by straightening it back out I’m “extending” it up towards the high G.

I’m trying to be open minded about this - plenty of other things in my technique seemed like problems before they were pointed out to me to be something potentially good - but string tracking has always been a little iffy for me, which makes me think this probably isn’t ideal, and certainly moving the orientation of your pick to your wrist (and my mechanic is largely wrist-based) doesn’t really seem like an optimized solution.

So, I’m guessing the thing to do here is to try to stop doing that. It’s certainly something worth keeping in my back pocket for tonal reasons, but I tend to default to very minimal edge picking and that seems to work well for me, so…

[blueberrypie]

In other words, I suspect this is related to string tracking more than anything about the thicker string “needing” more edge picking, and that by angling my thumb a little more I’m kind of pulling the pick a little closer to the lower string, and then by straightening it back out I’m “extending” it up towards the high G.

What you describe here is somewhat similar to what I feel when doing rolls on the three top strings. It’s (to me ) harder than on the other sets of strings, and I suspect it’s because my hand is not well “centered” so to speak. So, yep, kind of a tracking issue here maybe, which can be fixed by gliding the anchor a tad lower on the bridge (assuming some sort of wrist//bridge anchoring, which is what I do)

[Drew]

What you describe here is somewhat similar to what I feel when doing rolls on the three top strings. It’s (to me ) harder than on the other sets of strings, and I suspect it’s because my hand is not well “centered” so to speak. So, yep, kind of a tracking issue here maybe, which can be fixed by gliding the anchor a tad lower on the bridge (assuming some sort of wrist//bridge anchoring, which is what I do)

Well, I think the ultimate goal would be getting to a point where I can move that anchor pretty freely - it’s fine for a repeated three string loop, but in theory I should be able to extend that same motif across six strings while still staying evenly on the downbeat, and at that point you HAVE to be shifting your anchor point.

[NTC]

I’ve deleted this post as no longer relevant.