How to learn to flat pick?

[TBman]

Originally Posted by bufflehead

Palm over the pegs, pinky on the pick guard. Up, down, up, down, up, down, repeat. Alternately, you can try: Down, up, down, up, down, up, repeat. But never down, down or up, up. Save that stuff for strumming.

Get it down first without messing with hammer-ons and the like. It's the right hand that needs to be reoriented. Start slow--too many folk think that flat picking is all 1/16th notes. Heartburn music.

Back when I flat picked a bit I used to float my hand too. Harder that way to go fast, but tone was better and it helped with accuracy when bridging.

[LikeASir_]

Why can't you go down, down? What if I'm moving from the low E to the A string?

But yeah, in most cases I agree with down, up.

[Ten]

Originally Posted by LikeASir_

Why can't you go down, down? What if I'm moving from the low E to the A string?

But yeah, in most cases I agree with down, up.

It depends on where those notes occur in the beat, but in general because alternate picking keeps the correct rhythm for your picking hand. Everyone I’ve learned from says learn the rules before making the determination of how and why and where you may want to break them.

[Charlieb]

I've come full circle back to studying bluegrass after years of playing everything else. I started back over with the first song I learned "Wildwood Flower" which is a great song melody to start with.

Like said Scott Nygaard on pegheadnation is a really good teacher, first month free I believe. On to Bryan Sutton at ArtistWorks who is also fantastic but 3 months minimum payment to begin with...then there's Chris Eldridge at sonicjunction, I would highly recommend Chris also, he's a great player http://www.sonicjunction.com/chris-eldridge and listen to all the Doc Watson, Clarence White, Tony Rice etc you can find...you gotta get that ear training embedded into your brain....have fun...oh and yes Molly Tuttle is a fantastic player, the entire Tuttle family from daddy Jack on down thru little sister AJ Lee, Michael and Sully, they all were playing like well seasoned players at 6-7 years old