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We've drilled right down to where we should be. The minutiae.
Expect some mock concern from the cynics.
After all these posts and personal observations it seems to me that we have learned much about wrist and hand movement but there is still one great mystery.
How does GB really grip the plectrum?
What part of the thumb?
Where on the index (how far up or down)?
How much pick hanging sideways?
How much pick hanging down?
How tight is the grip?
And the big one as 3625 pointed out....what angle?
There are so many angles!
Why don't we know these things?
Because.......GB changes his grip. Think about it. We all do it. Minute movements to get more comfortable. A tiny change of angle to accommodate a certain feeling in the strings. The pick moves up the index, down the index. The thumb pushes from the tip and then may slide to more of the pad.
That's why we can't find a definitive picture. It's a moving target.
But there's a general position and I think we have a good understanding of it.
Personally I don't think you can look down at your hand and say "ok.......I have assumed the GB grip and I will not change a thing whilst I'm playing"
Everything about this tech screams "groove, elastic, move, flop, bend, flex" etc. So this also applies to the general and specific point where you anchor the pick.
It changes.
There is no one way.
And that's just fine. That's the individual physiology thing we've been talking about.
That's why Henry is different to George. That's why GB's grip looks different on any given day.
I think you find the general position and work with it until you are comfortable and find your sweet spot.
Always keeping in mind the small movements relaxed wrist and other parts of the tech we have discovered.
My general point is that we are never going to nail it down to an exact and correct grip.......and I'm only specifically talking about the coal face. The exact spot where you apply pressure to grip the pick.
It changes and it's meant to change.
Now watch what GB does right at the end of that clip. Just before he does the big last strum.
Right on! He completely re adjusts his pick grip. His body knows that to make the big strum he is going to have to reposition his grip and he makes the change.
Now that's not exactly what I'm talking about but you get my point. There are small adjustments all the time.......and every now and then there is a big adjustment.......where necessary.
So my opinion is that it's perfectly fine to keep fine adjusting as you play and that in fact these constant adjustments are part of the tech which as I keep postulating is a very fluid and natural thing.Last edited by Philco; 01-04-2015 at 07:46 PM.
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01-04-2015 07:43 PM
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The mention of anchoring with the two last fingers on your right hand is something that's helped me manage to get this to work without straining my wrist, so thank you for mentioning that.
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I made an odd discovery yesterday. It had to do with the thumb of my picking hand. Keeping in mind something JC said in his tutorial about the pressure point being at the upper right edge of the thumb. (The right edge would be the edge closest to the palm.)
I thought, "what would happen if I reversed this, and went with the upper left edge, the side of the thumb furthest from the palm?"
The result was interesting in that it changed the way my hand moves and the movement seems more uniform.
I suspect that in time I will move back toward the middle of the thumb. When I use the upper right edge of the thumb, my thumb angles away from my palm. (I'm not saying that is good or bad; it makes a real difference, though.)
If this still seems like a good idea (-or at least a touch of progress for me) over the weekend, I'll post a clip so you can see what I'm talking about.
Btw, this thread is nearing 40,000 views. Yay, Philco: you really started something here!
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01-09-2015, 11:33 AM #1004destinytot Guestit's perfectly fine to keep fine adjusting as you play
I've loosened my 'clamp' and am back to Medium (Planet Waves by D'Addario .70mm).
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Originally Posted by Philco
you're right that if he holds the pick loosely that is a game-changer
again i think the much maligned chuck andres is quite good on this point too - he says you should start by clamping the pick so it can't move in your fingers, but that once you get the feel for the technique you could loosen things up for various reasons.
he also stresses that one of the reasons ERADICATING pick movement in your fingers is important is that it allows you to explore the musical consequences of using different bits of yourself to initiate the pick movement (elbow, wrist, hand, fingers/thumb). a new orleans wiz-kid i heard once (who used benson picking) told me he used movements in his fingers quite a lot (a bit like writing he said).
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Originally Posted by Groyniad
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oh no that isn't just you
often the best way to go is to keep playing and playing - often problems seem to iron themselves out
but then again, it often happens too that what started out great starts working less well
chuck's point is certainly an interesting one - if you do stop variation at the point of contact with the pick it immediately allows you to explore other types of variation (fingers, wrist, elbow etc.)
my latest worry is that i've got serious problems CO-ORDINATING the picking and the fretting. i'm really not sure that this is the case - though i am pretty sure that i still have serious problems...
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It's "Tuck" not "Chuck" Andress.
I think it's really important to not make too many changes. You have to adjust, but you also have to put some consistent work in on one thing before you figure out whether or not it actually works.
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sorry tuck
- but i am the guy who keeps singing your praises round here...
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Originally Posted by ecj
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Originally Posted by Groyniad
Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
It's certainly a challenge. I think eventually the thing that "works" starts to overpower the stuff that doesn't as the default. There's only so much control you can have over all the variables.
I'm referring more to stuff like changing grip, hand position, picks, strings, on a weekly/monthly/quarterly basis. I stuck with 0.14 Thomasteks with a Fender medium, 17" guitar with 25.5" scale for a year without changing anything at all until I got JC Stylles' hand position and picking motion to work. I knew it worked because I could see him doing it. I eventually got to where I am.
I'm tinkering around with things a bit now, but I think it would've been a mistake to make any changes until I was able to do what I set out to do in the first place (with a little coaching). Like if I'd started and 2 months in thought "hey, I wonder if a heavy pick will sound better". Well, I don't know if JC Stylles could play what he's playing with a heavy pick, so it would be silly to switch it half way down the path just to see.
Sometimes we outsmart ourselves.
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Originally Posted by ecj
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lousy video quality but great playing and some very nice shots of GB right hand.
And another Take 5 excerpt in Australia 1982.
Last edited by nunocpinto; 01-13-2015 at 04:06 PM.
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Whoa, Tom Snyder from the old "Tomorrow" show. As the saying goes, "Much time has passed."
The RH footage around 1:15 is great. ("Right-hand footage" sounds odd when you think about it...)
Thanks.
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Originally Posted by nunocpinto
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One can see the attraction of the 'Benson' technique when demonstrated by the man himself. It is so fluid and relaxed, even when compared to other top guitarists, in my humble opinion.
What I do notice is that, talking left hand for a moment, he seems to fret using the pads of his fingers rather than the tips and as such, the fingers are almost straight and in plane with the fretboard. Anyone else experimented with this? None of my teachers told me to do it like this!
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Originally Posted by Stu Foley
Do we think this is something George normally does?
Do we know of anyone else who normally does this?
What difference does it make? (Guess I'll log off and pick up my guitar...)
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Originally Posted by Stu Foley
It's kind of ridiculous.
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What works, works...no?
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Originally Posted by edh
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Calvin Keys (unknown player to me) with the one and only Joe Henderson.
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For this muscle to be fully engaged and therefore firm, I would have to pinch my thumb and index finger together very hard thus eliminating pick flop altogether. This level of tension in the muscle suggests that one is supposed to squeeze the life out of the pick but this is not what I was seeing in the slow motion clips of George that Philco provided. I'm by no means far along the road, but I seem to have less drag on the pick when gripping it only just tightly enough for it not to fly out of my hand. IOW, when I grip the pick tightly I find that there is a tendency to catch on the strings rather than glide over them.
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Originally Posted by Stu Foley
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02-07-2015, 02:42 PM #1024destinytot GuestOriginally Posted by Stu Foley
What you're describing is precisely how I expected it to be.
I could further speculate that the high degree of flex in the Fender Thin pick somehow compensates for the firmness of The Clamp - and it may be so - but it's also a red herring and beside the point, which is that there needn't be any more firmness in The Clamp than in any of the fingers on my fretting hand. That's what I take away from my experience of switching back to a medium pick (on an archtop semi).
This is not at all what I'd expected, and it's a liberating shift in thinking. Here's a metaphor: there's no greater air pressure in one part of an inflated child's balloon than there is in another.
I'm going to test it out tonight (and report back briefly on the morrow).Last edited by destinytot; 02-07-2015 at 03:40 PM.
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02-07-2015, 02:52 PM #1025destinytot GuestOriginally Posted by MarkRhodes
Speaking for myself only, I strongly suspect that faulty perception and projection come into play. (I've become more disciplined in practising Tai Chi, and this is influencing my outlook in other areas.)
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