Switching back to plectrum from fingers

[JGinNJ]

I played jazz with a pick for my formative years, but learned fingers, too. Eventually, seeking more subtlety and polyphony with solo playing, I got into fingerpicking, Travis style, with acoustic music. I integrated that into my jazz playing to a point, and it feels natural to me to play chord melodies and even bebop lines with fingers.

What I'm realizing lately, though, is there's reasons so many of the jazz greats used a pick. Speed, clarity, cutting through, and a fatter tone all come to mind. For me, the biggest thing is the sound- fuller and less twangy. So I'm going to switch back for a while and see how it goes. I never learned any fancy picking techniques (I just played and figure it out), but maybe that's next.

[Rob MacKillop]

I hear you. I played lutes and classical guitars for thirty years, and although I used a plectrum for blues on electric guitar all that time, I never really studied plectrum techniques. These days I'm trying to get my plectrum control up to the standard of my fingers for nuance of tone and dynamic, but I also appreciate the qualities the plectrum gives me for clarity and the cutting quality you mention.

One might think that I would enjoy a hybrid technique, plectrum plus fingers, but the tonal difference drives me crazy!

[Thumpalumpacus]

I like working both angles. I was lucky enough to have an early teacher in school who insisted I learn PIMA, even as I wanted to learn Judas Priest and did so on the side. A few years later when I took private lessons, my instructor made no demands himself, but was (as a student of Lenny Breau's) a fingerstyle player himself, and that got me shaking the rust off those chops.

Latterly, over the last ten years or so, taking up slide has gotten me to appreciate another side of fingerstyle.

Usually, when I rock, I pick. When I blues, I pick, or sometimes hybrid, or sometimes fingerpick. When I jazz, solo it's fingerstyle, if anyone else is playing, it's either-or.

I don't know that that's very helpful, sorry.

[ronjazz]

I'm finding that the selection of a pick is the most important aspect of hybrid picking, in terms of matching the tone of the pick with the tone of the fingers. As a former classical/flamenco guitarist, I use nails, so the nylon Jazz lll picks are pretty close in tone to nails, as are the Herco nylons, although larger than I like. I've also re-purposed many of the easier classical guitar etudes of Aguado, Giuliani, Sor, Villa-Lobos, etc., to work specifically on tone production in hybrid picking. One of the interesting aspects is that hybrid picking can be very useful in establishing a solid Johnny Smith-like plectrum technique, since one needs to keep the A, M and C fingers in a ready position, not resting on the pickguard or guitar body. Practicing something like the Villa-Lobos Etude 1 with hybrid picking is very efficient in getting all the elements working together, along with bossa-nova and samba rhythms.

[mrcee]

IMHO you can get more rhythmic drive with a pick than the fingers. I'm thinking more in terms of Funk or dance music of any genre and since we're talking about Jazz this opinion might not matter but I don't think
a guitarist is going to pack the floor, at a honky tonk road house, fingerpicking unless he or she has a strong rhythm section behind them. I don't think fingerpicking would have worked for Chuck Berry or Charlie Christian.
For George Van Eps? You bet.

[goldenwave77]

What I'm realizing lately, though, is there's reasons so many of the jazz greats used a pick. Speed, clarity, cutting through, and a fatter tone all come to mind. For me, the biggest thing is the sound- fuller and less twangy.

I think this all depends on the pick. I use 38 mm nylons, a la Conti, and they are VERY bright, and snappy. Anything else (celluloid, Delrin, plastic, e.g. Jazz III's) sound dull and thuddy in comparison (to the nylons). Thicker nylons are still bright, but less so.

To me, fingers most of the time sound fuller, and more mellow (Wes M. and Charlie Byrd) than most picks. Often I'll switch pu's when going from pick (front pu) to fingers (middle position--both pu's).

To me, fingerstyle greatly eases playing a lot of passages. Any tune with a lot of large intervals OUGHT to be easier with fingerstyle. 3 fingers ought to be faster than one implement (the pick). Bebop stuff should be easier, so de Grosso is onto something it seems to me...but the question w/ fingerstyle, is rhythmic attack and variation--and you can do this more easily with a pick. That to me is the acid test. (Nobody thinks Charlie Christian was the greatest exponent of plectrum guitar---it's his rhythmic, riffy style that makes you sit up and notice.)

Wes M. I think adopted his very slidey style, because it makes rhythmic emphasis a lot easier.

I think a lot of jazz guitarists migrate into it from a classical background, and I'm not sure it's without some compromises. Joe P's later stuff is much more fingerstyle, but I also don't hear him playing fast single-note passages the way he did say back in the mid-60's, when he was more pick-based.

[NSJ]

I hear you. I played lutes and classical guitars for thirty years, and although I used a plectrum for blues on electric guitar all that time, I never really studied plectrum techniques. These days I'm trying to get my plectrum control up to the standard of my fingers for nuance of tone and dynamic, but I also appreciate the qualities the plectrum gives me for clarity and the cutting quality you mention.

One might think that I would enjoy a hybrid technique, plectrum plus fingers, but the tonal difference drives me crazy!

I'm making the transition from fingerstyle PIMA to hybrid. Right now, I'm back to working 12 hour days, so my practice time is limited again.

Nonetheless, I am making progress. Even at work, I take a plectrum and practice the tactile dexterity of working with it. I can feel and note a difference such that I'm getting more comfortable.

The issue, tone-wise, is getting the pinky or C-finger up to speed and also develop some proper nails on it. The tone still sucks with the C finger. But it's due in large part now due to the lack of nails. In a strictly PIMA world, the C was in the wilderness. It's learning to come in from the cold. The initial goal is to be able to play 3 and 4 note block chords with the pick and fingers like you can with the fingers using PIMA.

I love it. Can't wait to get at it with the attention it deserves. It's like a new world is opening up.

[NSJ]

PS-John Williams (the guitarist, not the Star Wars Cheese Guy) lamented that when he was playing rock on an electric guitar with SKY, he could only use fingers, PIMA.

he specifically noted the up-down pendulum like quality of the plectrum that is ideally suited for percussive music in terms of really capturing best the rhythmic feel necessary for the music.

[John A.]

I played jazz with a pick for my formative years, but learned fingers, too. Eventually, seeking more subtlety and polyphony with solo playing, I got into fingerpicking, Travis style, with acoustic music. I integrated that into my jazz playing to a point, and it feels natural to me to play chord melodies and even bebop lines with fingers.

What I'm realizing lately, though, is there's reasons so many of the jazz greats used a pick. Speed, clarity, cutting through, and a fatter tone all come to mind. For me, the biggest thing is the sound- fuller and less twangy. So I'm going to switch back for a while and see how it goes. I never learned any fancy picking techniques (I just played and figure it out), but maybe that's next.

A lot of people do both and/or some sort of hybrid approach, including many of the greats (e.g., Pass, Metheny, Hall, Scofield). Especially if your music mixes single line and contrapuntal elements, it's good to have more than one arrow in the quiver.

John

[whiskey02]

A little concentrated practice with a pick and you'll maybe be surprised with how fast your technique comes together. Then you need to have a little OCD time (just like most of us) figuring out what pick has "your sound".

[lammie200]

...there's reasons so many of the jazz greats used a pick. Speed, clarity, cutting through, and a fatter tone all come to mind...

I agree, but IMHO there are no reasons why all of those things cannot be accomplished using fingers, at least to a great degree. I feel like my technique for using only my fingers can be nearly as fast, if not as fast, as using a pick. With practice I can get a lot of clarity out of the notes as well. My technique more or less resembles someone holding a pick between their thumb and index finger. The edge of the thumb can handle the downstrokes and the tip of the index finger can handle the upstrokes. The two together can act like a pick for strumming. There just isn't the pinching of a piece of plastic to deal with. I find that holding a pick after many minutes can be uncomfortable.

[armando]

I hear you. I played lutes and classical guitars for thirty years, and although I used a plectrum for blues on electric guitar all that time, I never really studied plectrum techniques. These days I'm trying to get my plectrum control up to the standard of my fingers for nuance of tone and dynamic, but I also appreciate the qualities the plectrum gives me for clarity and the cutting quality you mention.

One might think that I would enjoy a hybrid technique, plectrum plus fingers, but the tonal difference drives me crazy!

Hi Rob. For single note playing I use the thumb/finger lute technique. I don't move the fingers though......only the hand. This way I get a lot of power and dynamics with speed.

[Rob MacKillop]

Yes, thumb-index is something I've done for decades - I played the lute for 25 years, and that's the primary technique for scale playing.

[leflaw]

I think this sounds more like Charlie Christian than Barney Kessel does. Compared to Charlie C, Barney K sounds like he is falling down the basement stairs. Not funky. Charlie may have used a pick, but he also used his fingers. Trust your ears

I would look at Wes, Hank Garland, Chet, Brent Mason, . All these cats are southerners or okies and can play banjo, guitar, etc. I took banjo lessons from Bill Keith. He was a wiz at tenor plectrum too.

I would say that most great guitarists do not limit themselves. Fingers, picks, trashcan lids, whatever. Need more volume, get a Marshall Stack or a Vox ac30. You may have to be insane to play gypsy jazz on a strat and a marshall. But insanity is not neccessarily an impediment in music.


Check out Djangos late electric guitar playing. Sounds entirely different.

And he was not restrained by two working fingers, he was liberated. He didn't need to practice stupid four finger scale patterns all day.

[JaxJaxon]

Have you ever had a pick fall out from between your fingers I have and when I first started playing I would stop to get another pick soon I started just using my index finger when that happened. and soon after that I would just use my fingers to play then advanced to using all my fingers. I can get more sounds finger picking. Pluck with the nails, pluck with the skin, same for strumming,and then you can strike the strings, and you cant strike 5 strings at once with a pick. there is a different sound a cord makes when all the notes are sounded at the exact same time as when each note is hit separately like using a pick. I still use a pick at times and I still use my fingers at times. Depends on my mood.

[timtheshredder]

There's definitely a lot of pros and cons to both styles. I'm a big fingerstyle player, but I also play with a pick for more rock guitar stuff. You might want to look into practice some hybrid picking styles like Tommy Emmanuel. He uses a pick and his 3rd & 4th fingers quite often.