Tips for strumming with a thumbpick
 

Title says it all. I'm new to thumb-picking and enjoy the picking side of things but find strumming to be less natural-feeling than using a normal pick.

Any thoughts or tips appreciated.

Try a Fred Kelly Bumblebee Jazz. I use one 100% of the time for fingerpicking and strumming. It is not the adjustability that makes it work for me but rather the play between the flat pick and the thumb band: not too much play for fingerpicking but a more natural feel for flatpicking.

I used to use a thumb pick years ago. I still gripped it like a flat pick. I used to drop picks a lot.

Today I am attempting to use more finger picking and bought thumb and finger picks. Just doesn't feel right.

I have long been a thumb picker, and could never do much with a flat pick because of their slipping. Recently I got much better at flat picking because of thin textured picks, and gravitated into alternate picking (double picking, back picking).

So I got a few Bumblebees to see if one pick could do it all. They are a hybrid, with a flat pick on a thumb band. A big long thumb pick.

They were OK for thumb picking. For flat picking, they certainly did stop the pick from rotating, slipping, losing the grip. And it was nice to instantly change between flat and thumb picking in a song.

But the Bumblebee was too stiff and rigid for good control. It was OK for strumming and simple downward strokes and notes. But it did not have the feel, flexibility between thumb and finger, and subtle control for complicated or very soft flat picking. It is a compromise.

The strumming requires deft manipulation of the TP to the extent that energy and control (dynamics) is a whole other learning curve. I use the TP for strumming and flat picking but it took a long time to master it. What I find necessary to effecting that kind of use requires a different TP material and weight.

Fred Kelly makes his Delrin nylon series of TPs in different weights. I normally use a 1mm celluloid TP for regular picking. If I anticipate strumming and flat picking I will use Kelly's yellow (medium weight) Delrin Slick Pick for that. The nylon blade of that pick more closely emulates a .68mm flat pick in thickness but the dynamic is actually closer to, say, a Fender medium celluloid flat pick.

The dynamic (feel) difference between the Kelly Delrin pic and any of the standard 1mm celluloid types of most every producer is pretty significant. The Delrin nylon has less of a pinch on the thumb and, for a normal user of the heavier 1mm celluloids, feels like it might dislodge from the thumb.

That's my experience. I tried using the standard 1mm celluloid for flat picking and strumming but there simply isn't enough control of it available when tightly secured on the thumb. A regular 1mm flat pick can be used with much more control because of the nuanced flexing of the grip between the thumb and index finger.