What is flatpicking?

[mc1]

I know that flat picking is playing the guitar with a pick. But I'd like to get some opinions on technique and genre, and if they factor into the definition at all.

Is hybrid picking also flatpicking?

Is it restricted to acoustic music? Bluegrass and related genres?

Can one say that Yngwie Malmsteen is a great flat picker? Al Di Meloa? Bireli Lagrene?

Does anyone ever call it flatplectrumming? Why not?

[Mr. Jelly]

Originally Posted by mc1

Does anyone ever call it flatplectrumming? Why not?

Really? You're not serious. There's the academic meaning of flat picking. You can Google that. The English language is a living evolving language like most others. So the term is defined pretty much buy the company in which it is used. Most often it is used in conjunction with acoustic guitar, a flat pick and a player that picks single strings often rather than strumming mostly. Like you I find the term cumbersome. To allot of people it means picking fiddle tunes on an acoustic guitar. It's no big deal. What's the difference between cross picking and sweep picking? Like sweep picking was a new thing when it was used in rock. They just backed into it until they were man enough to pull it off on acoustic guitars. That was a joke, sorry.

[zmf]

Originally Posted by mc1

Does anyone ever call it flatplectrumming? Why not?

The reason is obvious.

Flatplectrumming would eventually be shortened to flatplecting, which sounds like flatpicking, so we may as well stay with flatpicking.

[TBman]

I used to be a strummer, then a flat picker and at the end of my "picking" years I was a hybrid player.

Hybrid playing is part pick and part finger style. I played music by Led Zepplin, Neil Young, Yes, the Beatles, etc. , all acoustic.

At the end of my hybrid style playing years I stopped playing for about 15 years or so. When I started back up in the early 2000's I forced myself to learn finger style and not touch a pick.

[mc1]

Originally Posted by Mr. Jelly

Really? You're not serious.

Not about the flatplectrumming, that was in jest, although a revival the word plectrum might be fun.

I was serious, however, about the other questions. I don't really want to google flatpicking, and leave it at that, although I already have. I was hoping for guitarists to weigh in on it means to them.

Originally Posted by zmf

The reason is obvious.

Flatplectrumming would eventually be shortened to flatplecting, which sounds like flatpicking, so we may as well stay with flatpicking.

Which also might spawn off flatplecter, which sounds vaguely rude.

[mc1]

Originally Posted by TBman

I used to be a strummer, then a flat picker and at the end of my "picking" years I was a hybrid player.

Hybrid playing is part pick and part finger style. I played music by Led Zepplin, Neil Young, Yes, the Beatles, etc. , all acoustic.

At the end of my hybrid style playing years I stopped playing for about 15 years or so. When I started back up in the early 2000's I forced myself to learn finger style and not touch a pick.

Finger style rules! So I can tell from your reply that you separate out flatpicking from hybrid picking. Do you think the type of music (e.g. bluegrass) matters for it to be considered flatpicking?

[bufflehead]

When I'm strumming, I'm playing multiple strings per beat. (Although I tend to avoid playing all six strings at once.) When I'm flatpicking, I'm playing a single string per beat, usually to a faster beat than when I'm strumming.

When playing solo, I tend to play a modified strumming style where flatpicking alternates with the strums, especially in terms of base runs. When playing in an ensemble, especially within a group of mixed instruments, I tend to stick with rhythm strumming. This is especially true, for example, when I'm playing old-style with a mando or a fiddle. I don't want my flatpicking to compete for the attention as if I were playing lead.

[OKCtodd71]

It's this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6It-DM5dlQ

[TBman]

Originally Posted by mc1

Finger style rules! So I can tell from your reply that you separate out flatpicking from hybrid picking. Do you think the type of music (e.g. bluegrass) matters for it to be considered flatpicking?

No, the style of music doesn't matter. If you use a pick to play with limited/no strumming its flat picking to me. When I was a flat picker my concentration was on single note runs with cross picking and quick "doubles" - playing adjacent strings quickly, back and forth. Then I found that hybrid gave me a fuller sound.

[NormanKliman]

Not all picks are flat, you know.

[Silly Moustache]

Firstly, when I started playing guitar in the late '60s in the UK the word "pick" was a term used for a large tool for breaking up ground or as a verb meaning to choose or select.

The piece of celluloid or tortoiseshell used on a fretted instrument was called a plectrum.

There was a style of playing known as plectrum guitar which was largely used on archtop guitars playing chordal melodies such as this :



The Americans inherited a wonderful, complex and large language from the UK, but seem to have a habit of finding names for things that already have perfectly good names - Rotary instead of roundabout, crosswalk" for zebra crossing, chips instead of crisps, etc., and "picks" instead of plectrums, or more correctly plectra (pl.)

I have a personal theory that the term "pick" might originate from using the term for banjo player's finger and thumb plectra which may look as if they are "picking" rather than striking the strings.
In fact most people seem to think that we "pick" strings rather than "pluck" them - a subtle difference.

Anyway, as the guitar and mandolin industry in Europe was somewhat interfered with by two world wars, and some other European boundary squabbles, the development of both tended to be refocussed in the United States of America (one of the nations of North America).

The emerging technologies of radio and recording made popular music evolve and change rapidly in the 20th century and chordophones fretted strung instruments) evolved rapidly to meet changing demands.

With these changing musical styles and instruments, playing styles also evolved one of which is called flat-pickng which most associate with what, for lack of a better term is called "country" music (i.e. music recorded locally rather than in the large orchestral studios of New York Los Angeles etc.)

"Country" music had many sub-genres, not least Appalachian (essentially from Scots/Irish (Ulster) immigrants, combined with the important influences of African American music), and the south west (with all important influences of both Appalachian which evolved into many forms of "string bands" (banjo, fiddle, mandolin and guitar) and South Western and Hispanic music forms, where guitars were very much a part of the tradition.

The term flat-picking actually tends to refer to playing with a "boom-chick" rhythm style and solo playing emulating fiddle and mandolin lead styles,improvising, and ragging on and around the basic melody line and often combining both the rhythm and lead style.

See;

It is frequently connected to bluegrass music but was actually around long before string band music begat bluegrass, but bluegrass developed a (new) tradition of playing at incredibly high speed to show off the skills of the musicians and deter the audience from talking or dancing!

Flat-picking style is generally played on a Martin post 1934 dreadnought or by other noted builders such as Collings, Bourgeois, Santa-Cruz, Thompson etc., all of whom make guitars in the image of Martins, but flatpicking style may never be permitted to be played on an Ovation, Taylor or Gibson (there have to be rules - after all) - and as we all know .. Bluegrass rules!

I thank you!

[Mycroft]

Originally Posted by mc1

Finger style rules! So I can tell from your reply that you separate out flatpicking from hybrid picking. Do you think the type of music (e.g. bluegrass) matters for it to be considered flatpicking?

There is a certian association between Bluegrass and the term flatpicking, but also old time, folk, country and the like. See Rice, Tony, for the first. For them all, Steve Goodman will sometime singe off your nose hairs. Norman Blake. Of course, how do we classify Lester Flatt, who would rip off single line runs using a thumb and fingerpick?

[dnf777]

Same reason we call a flutter-by a butterfly. Easier.

[TBman]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

Firstly when I started playing guitar in the ate '60s in the UK the word "pick" was a term used for a large tool for breaking up ground or concrete.
it was also a verb meaning to choose or select.

The piece of celluloid or tortoiseshell used on a fretted instrument was called a plectrum.

We have so many words in the U.S. that mean the same thing its crazy. I don't know how anyone could learn our "english." We can't even get it right, how can a non-native speaker?

I've never heard anyone refer to a guitar pick as a plectrum in the "real" world, only seen it here. Using the term sort of reminds me of someone wearing a suit to a party when everyone else is in t-shirts and blue jeans.

[RTR]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

Flat-picking style is generally played on a Martin post 1934 dreadnought or by other noted builders such as Collings, Bourgeois, Santa-Cruz, Thompson etc., all of whom make guitars in the image of Martins, but flatpicking style may never be permitted to be played on an Ovation, Taylor or Gibson (there have to be rules - after all) - and as we all know .. Bluegrass rules!

I thank you!

Except that Jeremy Stephens, of High Fidelity seems to have missed the memo! He's using a thumb pick here, but the sound is pure Grass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=257aPHl56Eg