I know this is probably an answer of “what tone/resistance do you prefer”? but I’m just wondering if there is a preferred area, where accuracy is concerned.
On my strat, I notice that I anchor only with my hand’s heel near the bridge on the low E string, and end up picking slightly behind (close to the bridge) the middle pickup. I’ve noticed, however, that I prefer the sound closer to the neck, and find it easier to pick between the middle and neck pickup of my strat.
So, should I move “forward” a bit, toward the neck pickup? If I do, where will I anchor my hand?
I’ve noticed that one of my main issues is that my hand moves around a bit if I float too much, which affects my accuracy. It seems that I need an anchor point. I’ve been messing w/ the pinky anchoring a la John Petrucci, but I’m not sure if that’s the way to go.
Which style of music? Which technique? Which particular player to emulate? It’s a great question—regarding accuracy—and you’ve already acknowledged the “tone control” aspect of picking. I’d throw timbre in there as well, but anyhow, yeah, context seems relevant.
And if a pickup is in my way, I’m likely to grab a guitar where it isn’t.
There is not. “Accuracy” can mean a variety of things, but I can’t think of any which are primarily controlled by this.
As your technique comes together, you will converge on a particular way of contacting the guitar and that will tend not to change much. It’s only natural - eventually, everything you do becomes memorized by feel. Precisely where that is varies.
If you’re a downward pickslanting style player, it’s common to rest the right side of your hand on or near the bridge like this:
By shifting slightly onto the strings and on to the bridge, you control muting. Moving too far onto the strings deadens everything. So you will have a tendency to stay in that area.
If you have this type of form, a similar situation arises:
Notice the wrist is extended, so there is not the same contact from the right side of the hand covering the strings. The contact now comes from the “watch band” area of the wrist. This means when I’m picking on a higher string, there is no muting. This also means that I can move that resting point entirely out on to the strings if I want, and as long as I am picking on a higher string, there is still no muting.
So… if you’re looking for a setup that you can move around over the pickups, to change the tone, you could try setup 2. If you’re looking for a setup that provides muting across a number of strings, you can try setup 1.
As for me, I found that it’s comfortable to play exactly between neck and bridge pickup. Which brings me some trouble: I have to lower middle pickup on my guitars. And as I see, @Troy is cheating because he hasn’t middle pickup at all ))
However, if I do my "Useless-Fast-Tremolo"™ I place my pick somewhere above first coil of bridge humbucker. I don’t know why but it really helps with fast monotonous motions.
@Troy thanks! Also, apologies if you’ve answered this before, but what is your signal chain? Your tone in the first video posted (and all of your videos, typically) is absolutely beautiful.
Oddly, I’ve been thinking about this recently too, and I think I’ve identified it as a source of inconsistency in my picking technique.
I was shooting some video for a singlecoil comparison over the weekend, and while doing some primarily legato playing decided to drop in a fast picked run, and my picking was just all over the place. I was just checking the camera angle at that point so I didn’t really worry about it much, but kept picking and suddenly my hand locked into place and things started to flow properly, with my pick.
I then noticed that as that had happened (and so much of this stuff is subconscious - if I’ve learned anything from CtC it’s that thinking consciously about how we’ve unconsciously solved playing problems is an incredibly fruitful exercise) that I had shifted my arm position pretty significantly - when I was doing some legato stuff and dropping in the odd picked note here and there, my arm was kind of across the top/center of the guitar, and I was picking around/maybe a little in front of the middle pickup, possibly for tonal reasons (you do get a fatter tone up there, and when I was much younger I remember doing some experimentation with the impact of where you picked on the tone so it may have been something that became habit for me back from my mostly legato days). When I then tried to rip off a fast scale run, I diidn’t move my arm, and my picking was slop. I DID move my arm, though, as things started to come together, sliding it back and resting my forearm over the arm contour rather than a bit in front (which has me playing at about the same position as you, just behind the middle pickup), and at that point suddenly my picking hand became much more controlled. I started paying attention to this, and realized whenever I was practicing alternate picking it was from this position, but when I was just jamming out and not really thinking about it, I had my arm farther forward.
Moving between fast picked runs and slower stuff or more legato oriented stuff has been something I’ve always struggled with - when I was doing fast alternate picking I could keep doing it, when I wasn’t though it was really hard for me to start. This is literally a 48-hour-old realization (from a guy who’s been playing more than 20 years, lol) so I’m still working through it, but it really seems like this is the reason for me, that I’m using a different hand position when I want to pick fast.
If so, there are two possible answers here - either learn to keep my arm in a more picking-friendly position on the guitar at all times, or develop the habit of moving my arm back to the contour when I DO want to do something that requires faster alternate picking. In theory the former is more efficient, however if you’re really digging in on big, bluesy overbends or aggressive rakes, you’re probably using more than just your wrist to pick, so some extraneous repositioning may be worth it for the greater good.
FWIW, though, I may have felt it was harder to pick further back at some point, but at this point, I’ve been working on alternate picking with the help of the CtC observations for long enough that for me the arm contour/just behind middle pickup position DOES feel more comfortable and easier. If I had to hazard a guess, if it feels subjectively “harder” to pick closer to the bridge, the strings have a little less flex there than they do an inch or two further away so I’d wonder if maybe you’re digging in a little too deeply. Just a hunch, though.
I only anchor with my heel as well. Between the heel of my hand on the bridge and my arm flat on the contour, it’s a pretty stable connection.
Final thing I’ll say - after joining CtC, I didn’t make a conscious decision to relocate my picking hand. It just happened. I’ve noticed a few other aspects of my playing evolve as I spent more and more time working on picking (I’ve always been a mostly legato guy, though I’ve closed that gap somewhat this year). So, just let that stuff happen, watch for it, and kind of try to learn from your body and how it responds and figures things out.
