How to hold that pick

The "fist" idea is hopelessly wrong.

Close your hand slightly, and put your thumb on the side of your index finger by the nail - making an X

Lift your thumb

Put the pick on your finger with the pointed end pointing in the same direction as your finger, and protruding a couple of mm in front.

Put your thumb back on your finger.

QED

Yeah, what he said.

Or maybe you could just put your thumb and index in the shape of a cross, or an X whatever feels best..

Then for strumming you could put your pinkie on the pickguard, I do that for playing lines, and when I'm strumming I don't put the Pinky there so i can be free.

Lots of discussions on this topic. Here's one of the more recent ones (complete with photos!) that might help.

https://www.guitarnoise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=43768

Ultimately it's a matter of both control and comfort, both of which are hard to accomplish and maintain with a vise-like death grips on a pick.

Hope this helps.

Peace

Yeah, you've got to learn to hold the pick right in the first place, so that you can later do pinch harmonics until your thumb bleeds (all over the strings, till the strings turn black, after a 4 - 6 hour gig), and you get cool splatters on the front of your guitar, no band-aids, just be tough, like your eventual callouses! :lol:

Welcome to the forum. Good question, I think it has already been answered, I just wanted to add the harmonics, blood, guts and glory? :roll:

Yeah, you've got to learn to hold the pick right in the first place, so that you can later do pinch harmonics until your thumb bleeds (all over the strings, till the strings turn black, after a 4 - 6 hour gig), and you get cool splatters on the front of your guitar, no band-aids, just be tough, like your eventual callouses! :lol:

:shock: :shock: :shock:

I should learn to hit the original harmonics before I start that LOL.

If your pinky sticks up in the air while holding the pick, you are officially posh.

You're only officially posh if your pinky is in the air when you pick, AND you're British. :wink:

We septics are more or less non-posh by definition...

:D
Ande

PS- no death grip on the pick, but hold it firm. It took me months to stop dropping the darn things. And when you're playing acoustic, it always goes in the soundhole. I don't know how, but it always does.

Proper Brits only use the finest china picks. Honest.

Well my pinky is up when I'm strumming, I actually use the same position for playing lines and strumming, the only difference is the pinky which goes up or stays on the bridge.

And I use the pinky for muting everything when I'm taping ( or I just use my arm when I'm tapping in the lower frets).

Another helpful link - http://guitar.about.com/library/weekly/aa071200g.htm

I prefer playing without a pick whichever guitar it might be. You gotta get the sound ultimately.

I took your advice on how to hold a pick properly, and I'm glad to say it helped me tremendously!

Here goes: Holding a pick is something you learn when you first pick up a guitar, so I guess I always assumed I was doing it correctly. I held picks pretty much the way I picked them up--which might be a common mistake--between my parallel index finger and thumb, along the same line as my wrist.

If you try playing this way (now I sound like a teacher) you'll find that you have to bend your wrist downward to get the pick roughly perpendicular to the strings and strum by bending your wrist side to side (as when you're waving) and moving your whole arm at the elbow, which can quickly become tiring. Plus, my pick could move in my fingers unless I held it tightly. With all that, I had a flailing pick which made it difficult to play single notes consistently without hitting other strings or missing.

With the technique Alan Green describes, my hand is closer to the guitar, the pick is already perpendicular to the strings, so I can keep your wrist straight, and I can pick by rotating my wrist, like turning a key, even without using my arm. The pick won't move, even when you hold the pick loosely (try it and see!) and instead of picking "harder" to play louder, I just increase or relax my grip on the pick to change my dynamics.

Now i can work on picking cleanly and really get somewhere. It's wonderful! Thanks!

*Dvorak has a tendency to go into protracted and sometimes indecipherable technical explanations involving long words and scientific concepts. It's because he wants to study engineering. Please excuse him.

Nice disclaimer. :lol:

I tried this last night and found it helpful. I have never felt very comfortable using a pick and usually just use my fingers, but it felt better holding it in the above described way.