Thumbpick - plectrum - or none?

[dominant7th]

Thanks Arthur.

Great information.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Arthur Blake

You mentioned ragtime blues among your preferred styles.

Here's one of the classics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVLtka6s1Sg

It's simply not possible to get the nuanced sound he produces without bare fingers, so I moved from classical study to fingerstyle many years ago, and never acclimated to picks of any variety

You sure Blake didn't use a thumbpick?
I agree with you, I prefer bare finger(nail)s, but I thought most of those old blues guys used a thumbpick.

[Arthur Blake]

Originally Posted by JonPR

You sure Blake didn't use a thumbpick?
I agree with you, I prefer bare finger(nail)s, but I thought most of those old blues guys used a thumbpick.

Blake's signature sound is a stumbling bass. The thumb rolls very quickly across two bass strings. Plus you don't see a pick in his album photos.

Obviously I could be wrong - wasn't there when he played, but I think of picks as better suited to regular styles rather than the syncopated rhythms that made him remarkable.

If you listen to people playing his music using thumbpicks, they don't quite capture his sound.

[6L6]

If not using a flat pic, I use these:



The first guy I ever saw doing hybrid picking was Roger McGuinn when the BYRDS hit the music scene. His solos on songs like "Bells of Rhymney", "TURN! TURN! TURN!", "8 Miles High", and others were awesome as his Ricky rang out.

Try hard as I did, I could just never get any accuracy down with hybrid picking so I eventually quit trying.

But if I could perfect one style, it would surely be hybrid picking.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by JonPR

You sure Blake didn't use a thumbpick?
I agree with you, I prefer bare finger(nail)s, but I thought most of those old blues guys used a thumbpick.

Hi Jon…

I think lots of old-timers used thumb and/or finger picks.

I don't think it matters unless you are going to attempt to knock off their style exactly in which case you need to buy a cheap guitar to go with it, and let the strings reside on it for about a year at a time.

I've seen good players play/imitate the style of singers with about every combination of picking/playing around. It's the feel one is after usually, not the note-for-note imitation that breathes life into the arrangements.

I've seen blues players/singers who use classical guitars successfully.

[SantaCruzOMGuy]

Hybrid picker here. Started on electric, its a great technique if u go back and forth constantly as i do. I decided to go that way watching jimmy page. I love the articulation i have on the base. And i grow the thumb nail long, and can use both rotating the pick in and out a little, and for artificial pinch harmonics. If u grow the 2 nails long, u can balance them all well. Where I screwed up was in not incorporating a pinky but it's too late now after all of these years

Sent from my SM-G860P using Tapatalk

[CaffeinatedOne]

Dom - with your background in classical style, you could probably write your own ticket as far as fingerstyle, flatpicking or hybrid styles. I'd like to encourage you to approach the thought process from a different perspective, without the limitations of overanalysis.

Because you have the finger chops and muscle memory established for thousands of finger movements (and in my view that is extremely difficult to establish), why not approach the instrument and your expression from purely a sound based perspective? Find the sound you want to make and then use whatever tool is most efficient to make that sound.

I'm probably a hybrid fingerstylist, although I try not to analyze it too much because that makes me think about my fingers at the expense of the expression. I learned to play by ear about 40 years ago on acoustic guitar, and while I play electric plenty, it feels like a different instrument to me. The acoustic speaks back in tactile fashion (I had bloody fingertips in high school, attesting to how much it talked back and how little I understood about changing strings).

I find using a thumbpick and fingerpicks to be less than successful for my style because they seem to loosen up or get uncontrollable. Maybe I just have to be more patient. But I'm at home playing fingerstyle without any picks at all, or playing with a thick Fender flatpick. At times I'll be doing some of both if the tune calls for it.

I guess my message is that, since you have developed the self discipline to learn classical styles, you can explore with your eyes closed, so to speak, without fear of devolving to a sloppy style. You're past being a sloppy player, so allow yourself to hear it, feel it, sense it without limiting yourself to any particular "style". Let the idea begin inside you and come out of your instrument without becoming hyper aware of how that happened.