Guitar Picking Doubts (Light vs Strong)

[Shadow of the Sun]

Pasquale is an economy picker, yes, but his technique can be very easily adapted to crosspicking, too. Because the fulcrum of his picking style is the joint of the index finger, just moving the pick causes it to rise out of the plane of the strings on every pick stroke - which means you can use the technique to play alternate picked single-note-per-string arpeggios without much difficulty. In fact, I find that using economy picking with Pasquale's technique is harder than just alternating.

Give it a go; it's a fun little trick to try.

[christianm77]

Pasquale is an economy picker, yes, but his technique can be very easily adapted to crosspicking, too. Because the fulcrum of his picking style is the joint of the index finger, just moving the pick causes it to rise out of the plane of the strings on every pick stroke - which means you can use the technique to play alternate picked single-note-per-string arpeggios without much difficulty. In fact, I find that using economy picking with Pasquale's technique is harder than just alternating.

Give it a go; it's a fun little trick to try.

Nice!

I'll take your word for it can certainly imagine this to be the case.

I might have a play with it, I have a feeling it's quite alien to the way I pick though.

[NSJ]

Cross picking can be ddu rather than alternate. This is the way Lage Lund, Chico Pinheiro and Clarence White do it.

DDU sounds like it would be natural for triplets or three note groupings as you demonstrate with the spread triads. But it sounds problematic and excessively complicated for eighth notes.

Glad I remain a finger style player

[Robertkoa]

We'll all wait with bated breath for you to post clips demonstrating that you have stronger picking technique than Al DiMeola.

Most phones can take vids, so no need to wait for your grand CD release.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You'll wait as long as I make you wait ..
And the better My Music is the more you will hate it.

And the more *Advanced my Technique is the more you will hate that-

You already dislike the CD without hearing it...lol..
Look what you wrote above.




I don't think you should listen to any of my stuff- may not be good for you and you already don't like it anyway.
















You'll hear about me soon enough -

[destinytot]

AFAIK TG uses the term cross-picking to refer to a specific mechanic used to negotiate strong hops in one note string picking.

I don't think this has much to do with PGs technique though happy to corrected if wrong. PG is essentially what rock players would call an economy picker - at least that's what he covers in his lesson online.

Thanks. I haven't heard Pasquale use the term 'cross-picking', but I've been a little curious as to how much agreement there is (if any exists at all) on the term as a descriptor for Pasquale's technique. I'd hoped that Robertkoa might comment, unless we're talking at cross-picking purposes.

[Shadow of the Sun]

Thanks. I haven't heard Pasquale use the term 'cross-picking', but I've been a little curious as to how much agreement there is (if any exists at all) on the term as a descriptor for Pasquale's technique. I'd hoped that Robertkoa might comment, unless we're talking at cross-picking purposes.

Pasquale doesn't use the term, since it's a bluegrass term that Troy Grady has taken and redefined for his own use. In Troy's parlance, cross-picking refers to any style of picking where the pick follows a curved trajectory so that at the beginning and end of each pick stroke the pick is above the plane of the strings.

The index-and-thumb method of picking fits that category because the pick has to move in a small curve due to the way the index finger works. A way I've explained the motion (at least how I apply it) is to make a loose fist with your index finger extended. The motion of pulling your finger into the fist is the motion of the upstroke, and extending it again is the downstroke, although when you're holding a pick the motion is smaller. The thumb doesn't do that much of the motion, it's mostly the index finger taking the thumb along the for the ride.

The same technique can be used in a different musical context to great results - a metal player from Japan, Takayoshi Ohmura is known for his incredibly fast alternate picking use the thumb-and-index motion method.

[christianm77]

Thanks. I haven't heard Pasquale use the term 'cross-picking', but I've been a little curious as to how much agreement there is (if any exists at all) on the term as a descriptor for Pasquale's technique. I'd hoped that Robertkoa might comment, unless we're talking at cross-picking purposes.

Maybe cross picking is what happens when you get really frustrated you can't play something.

Actually the first time I heard the term cross picking was in reference to Al Di Meola - IIRC he doesn't alternate in this case.

[destinytot]

Pasquale is an economy picker, yes, but his technique can be very easily adapted to crosspicking, too. Because the fulcrum of his picking style is the joint of the index finger, just moving the pick causes it to rise out of the plane of the strings on every pick stroke - which means you can use the technique to play alternate picked single-note-per-string arpeggios without much difficulty. In fact, I find that using economy picking with Pasquale's technique is harder than just alternating.

Give it a go; it's a fun little trick to try.

I have two of his music masterclass videos, but haven't worked with them. I'll probably get the third simply because I'm an admirer. I also had a great Skype lesson/consultation with Pasquale, for which I prepared questions in advance - mostly about picking.

That was about a year ago. Since then I've grown comfortable using two different picks and techniques on two different guitars - except when using my thumb, which I forced myself to do (live) without being technically prepared (I'm still not) just to get back to the music. EDIT No 'speed' - but it's improvised in coherent language, which I was in danger of losing to the pursuit of picking (as an end in itself):

[destinytot]

Pasquale doesn't use the term, since it's a bluegrass term that Troy Grady has taken and redefined for his own use. In Troy's parlance, cross-picking refers to any style of picking where the pick follows a curved trajectory so that at the beginning and end of each pick stroke the pick is above the plane of the strings.

The index-and-thumb method of picking fits that category because the pick has to move in a small curve due to the way the index finger works.

Excellent answer - thank you!

[matt.guitarteacher]

Pasquale doesn't use the term, since it's a bluegrass term that Troy Grady has taken and redefined for his own use.

Oy. I hate when people do that. As if guitar and music terminology isn't confusing enough generally.

[destinytot]

In Italian, but I think Alessio applies, demonstrates and contrasts clearly (from around the two-minute mark):

[Carloscepinha]

Thanks for the replies guys.


I can hardly ever use picks under the 1mm mark due to the lack of precision if they are too flopy.
I found a 0.75 ultex pointy really hard pick, not flexible, it can be used to alternate pick insanely fast (tremolo like) but the sound is just horrible.

I've came to notice that the definition of soft and hard picking seem to have their variations bettween styles and individual people.

Bernstein to me sounds like medium atack. If acoustic you might hear some buzz when he really digs in. But most of the time he has a huge control bettween soft and medium. Looks/sounds like it.


I've also noticed that some heavier picks require less strenght like those jazzIII you can pick harder with them a lot easier than you would with a regular traditional shaped 1mm pick.

Light picks force people to pick harder and with more "intention" and "assertiveness".

Btw the dude on the Red archtop had a strange tone, not his best. His pick looked thick, his attack strong, but just sounded bad.

And the relationship bettween the soft/hard attack and the rythm should be neutral. Jim Hall provides great example.


My idea of soft picking is Pasquale Grasso style.

My idea of hard picking is maybe something like this at the strongest points. (acoustic L5 on the street)

Some shred guys actualy might be playing extra-light on those 008 009 etc but it sounds harder because the strings will 'pop' or 'slap' a lot easier than our usual 012s, etc... Or some others like Paul Gilbert, might be really spanking the guitar regardless of the strings.


On the cross picking thing (wich IMHO is a dumb name for just straight regular alternate picking) i've started doing it when I wanted to play arpeggio paterns that most people would sweep, but swingin 8th notes. I cannot sweep 1 stroke and have individual control over the attack on each note. For triplets sweep might just work fine. Basic logic. Tons of people do it out of sheer instinct.

On PG technique, I believe it is a hibrid bettween the regular Nylon Concert guitar right hand and eletric fingerstyle, in terms of flesh+nail combination of the finger, hammering direction and tonal projection. He uses a bit thin Thomastik 011-049 strings that do not look set low. They have quite some room, just like a Concert guitar would have with nylon strings. I believe the 1mm celluloid teardrops he uses combine with his ergonomic right hand technique with little resistence. He also has the "normal" picking, alternate, sweeping, cross, etc. His touch seems light but with headroom for diggin in.


The guy with the gypsy picking tecnique seems to be using a quite heavy pick, but interesting video.
I've noticed many gypsy style guys go around 1,5mm mark.

I've tried those crazy big 3mm, 2mm, 4mm picks for eletric guitar, and if they are nicely polished with a round tone, they allways have an incredibly soft atack (doesnt matter how hard you pick, sounds soft until you actually slap the strings). If they do not have that "undefined atack", they will have a "scratch" sound on every single pickstroke, you'll sound like a DJ and not like a guitar player.

So many times a basic traditional 1mm 1.14mm like a Fender Heavy or Fender Extra Haevy will sound better (i believe its the closest to what they had and used during the early days, and the playing on the records is great)


destinytot the thumb thing is a great idea and sounds good : ) cheers


PS - my main concerns on the technique and string height/pick height came when I had pain from playing 3 or 4 hours/day and the strings were a bit high and the luthier got them lower. I used to do that to pick harder when busking on the street with the amp running on a motocycle battery. As the energy gets lower the hand picks harder without even noticing.
I'm afraid of wearing the frets really fast since I need to level them 2 times a year, after the holes appear.

sorry for the longpost

[destinytot]

@Carloscepinha: thanks for that reflective, honest and personal post. Really worth reading.

[christianm77]

Interestingly Oberg is anchoring here at the bridge... Certainly projects well as far as I can tell. He is unplugged? Later on when the Wawau Adler starts playing pick rhythm he seems to 'unanchor' a bit.

Re: picks I now use a 1.5mm or 2mm pick, I've gone past the super heavy pick era...

[Carloscepinha]

destinytot you're welcome

I believe it was unplugged, at some festival. The guys got together jammin to kill time and someone caught it. In one of those "garden videos" the bass player arrives in the middle of a song. It's a really good L5 copy, and I've read on some interview he might be playing 12s or 13s. Still the way it sounds compared to the Selmer is indeed very surprising.

I do have a 1.5mm that I like, but the tip is a bit rounded wich lacks clarity on lower dinamics. Been jumping bettween 1.14mm and 1.4mm JzIII. To play without restraining myself too much with the 1.4m I would have to gauge up to 13s on the strings.

[christianm77]

Yeah I find this as well. I'm playing TI .13s ATM on my 175, and am seriously considering .14s. Perhaps I should try a lighter pick instead ;-)

[destinytot]

I wish it weren't so (and I'd like to dismiss it as 'putting Descartes before the horse...'), but I think one's approach to picking matters.

Re. light vs strong, I favour light - but I think what I most value is loud-soft dynamic range. I think that's what I was going for when I started taking tentative steps back toward traditional picking - and recorded this one Sunday morning ('The Pyjama Takes'):

But I've become more confident since then - because I've established my own criteria and priorities.

I occasionally get to gig in an organ trio, and we're starting to listen to each other - this is important to me, because we're going beyond what I'm fond of calling 'parallel play' (after Piaget) and I'm hopeful that we can build something of beauty together.

In that trio setting, my ideal is Benson picking with one of these Cool Thin picks (60mm, made of Juratex) and TI GB 14s on small-bodied guitar - but it's very dependent on 'groove'.

That picking also works fine playing solo under ideal conditions, and I've been enjoying using it at home all summer. But I haven't been able to use it on gigs - same strings on an 18" archtop with a floater - in humid (and windy) outdoor conditions.

On the other hand, a more traditional grip is working well with slightly clammy/sticky strings, and 'pick slanting' has become intuitive (regardless of grip) - allowing me to listen, think, feel and project from calmness (a big deal for me).

[christianm77]

Sounding sweet there Mike.

Your grapples with picking remind me of mine. In the end I have decided to go with the trad grip DWPS simply because it's good for most of the things I do... but there's always a compromise...

[Runepune]

There are so many ways and differing preferences, but here's a personal experience and a recent discovery of mine

I've always picked with stiff picks. I don't want the pick itself to flex/compress, I want to control the dynamics myself and feel the string resistance.

Small picks was my choice until recently (Dunlop Jazz size or slightly larger). It felt like I had better control with only a small portion of the pick sticking out.

However, as I moved on to playing guitars with thicker strings, and especially acoustics, it just didn't sound good with that small thing. Too wimpy. So I started using slightly larger picks with less pointy tips. Much better sounding. However...listening to recordings of myself, I felt I sounded much too dynamic. As if I lacked areas in between soft and loud.

I was still only letting a small portion of the pick stick out, meaning it would allow for less pick wiggle...as I thought this would mean less movement for my hand, and more control. How wrong I was.

Only in the last few weeks I've started practicing letting the pick stick further out. And in that time I already have more control over dynamics, better sound, AND better and more precise technique! This way, letting the pick wiggle a bit more, makes it slide so smoothly over thick strings, and if I instead want the string to give in (go louder) I just give the pick a firmer grip. I do not have to adjust how deep I dig, so going from soft to hard and everything in between suddenly comes so natural. And that thumb doesn't accidentally mute strings any more (e.g. when doing chord patterns/arpeggios).

It even seems I move the hand less than before, and can more easily do large string skips. Kinda like when using a pencil...it may initially feel like holding it right at the tip gives you more control, but holding it further up makes you use less movement and gives smoother lines.

[jzucker]

it's not a matter of either or. You should be able to do both, sometimes within the same melodic fragment.

[matt.guitarteacher]

Wow, Mike. Great stuff.

Love the triplet phrasing throughout, and the double-time bits are really solid. Thanks for posting this.

[Shadow of the Sun]

I've been playing with Pasquale's technique, or at least my approximation thereof, almost exclusively for a couple of months. And while I'm still quite slow with the new technique (I don't have much discipline for practising and mostly just pick up the guitar and mess around every day or so), I'll mention that I think it works best with a thinner pick - I'm using a Dunlop Medium - because it's a very "edge picking" style of technique, similar to how Benson Picking is. You can get away with a thin pick because you're holding it at an angle where the pick is "thicker" than it actually is.

You also can't choke up on the pick much with the technique, either. Well, you can, but it has to be a stylistic choice. Choking up on the pick means that the flesh of your thumb brushes the string very easily, which is ideal when you're trying to do rock or metal style pinch harmonics but not when you're trying to do clean arpeggios.

[destinytot]

Wow, Mike. Great stuff.

Love the triplet phrasing throughout, and the double-time bits are really solid. Thanks for posting this.

Thanks, Matt.

Have you listened to Sean? (I'm transferring those tapes now.)

[Carloscepinha]

destinytot really nice man. I enjoyed listening

it is surprising how well you sound with such picking and pick choice.

usualy i find a huge tonal diference bettween those thin picks and a regular celluloid standard 1mm with that regular tip (its almost pointed but not really pointed, rounded of on the edge).

also some jazzIII XL (after worning out the plastic edges that come from the pouring of the plastic into the mold) to have a completely diferent sound.

it surprises me that you found a 0.60m pick that does not bend (at least so much as one would expect)


on the benson picking i've tried that wierd angle but it never made much sense to me, i have to force it to happen, it's very tiring on my right hand, it's harder to control the strenght of the atacks for me. And he is a great musician but I don't really like his tone on the records/videos i've heard, just not my cup of tea. A bit trebbly. The oposite tone of the guys i've mencioned.


Runepune
Thanks for the info on your experience, really interesting that I felt exactly the same way as you did. 4years ago I had 3mm teardrop (gypsy style carbon pick) and sometimes i would play with a small jazzIII. But playing with a Fender Heavy Standard was by far the best, as the pick had more diferent responses to tone changes and dinamic changes throught small control. It was harder to control at first. Small picks seem easier to play faster lines but after that, it's harder to "dig in".

My memory fails me, not sure if it was called cracking the code or something else. But someone went through a series of videos recording shred virtuosos right hands at high FPS. Guys like Michael Angelo Batio or maybe Frank Gambale, some had the same concept of letting a bit of the pick stick out.
The pick is not flexible but they hold it in a relaxed way that lets the pick slide from 1 string to another without too much resistence. Looks like almost if the pick is bending but its just the hand movement. Also it happens in a very ergonomic smooth way.


Shadow i've seen some pick of him with a celulloid teardrop (small jazzIII sized like) 1mm.

About the tecnique itself, not sure about it but I believe to use what would be called tradition. If the angle occours it's not something I think about. Each time a string is atacked should produce the same tone regardless of pick direction. Tone and atack should be under control of the pick.

a few months i transcribed this and I believe at the time i was picking at my lightest point (after that I raised string height a bit when i took the guitar to the luthier)

Thanks

[christianm77]

Cracking the Code = Troy Grady