Guitar players: How can I improve my right-hand accuracy with the pick?

Cafe Society
1

I’ve played guitar for a very long time, but for one reason and another, I’ve never been very good with the plectrum. For one thing, when I was starting out, I was learning a lot of Doors songs, and I learned that Robbie Krieger just used his right-hand fingers like a classical guitarist. So I did the same thing, and then becoming enthusiastically involved with classical guitar, I simply went further along that road. And while all this was going on, I got into rockabilly guitar, which also involves using several fingers of the right hand. When playing any type of rock or blues music that isn’t rockabilly, I do use a pick but tend to use my middle and ring fingers to pluck notes on the treble strings, at least for vamps and other rhythm parts.

The trouble is, I’m realizing more and more that I need to use only the pick if I’m trying to get a bright “twangy” sound. For example, if you watch a video of the Animals performing “House Of The Rising Sun”, you’ll see that the guitarist is playing the arpeggios using only the pick; I’m way too clumsy with the pick to be able to do this. And the same is true of most other music of the era which features a bright guitar sound.

Does anyone know of any good exercises that’ll help me overcome this?

2

I’ve found it really helpful to use just the RH thumb as a preparation to using the pick. If the thumb knows which string it wants to be on, the pick will follow.

Sometimes you want to dig down with the pick, so that the drag against the strings slows the strum down. I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going on in ‘House of the Rising Sun’.

3

Thanks for responding. It does look like that’s how the guitar parts in so many of those songs were being played. Trying to emulate it hasn’t worked for me so far, but then as you say I wasn’t “digging down” with the pick, and that might have been the reason.

4

Assuming you don’t want to mess with your nails to get that twangy sound, how about trying finger picks. I’ve never tried them – just a thought.

Not sure if this is just my prejudice as a classical player but it seems to me that flat picking is … [better left unsaid].

5

I know one really good alternate picking exercise that helps articulation, and also helps the right hand find the strings with the pick.

Pick the following pattern using a downstroke for the first note then alternate up, down, up, etc., the rest of the notes. The numbers indicate which order to play the notes. Keep each left-hand fingers in their corresponding positions. Play at any fret position you find comfortable.

Easiest to describe with a picture.

Play slow enough that you can do it without mistakes. Your speed will improve as you practice.

6

You could use a thumbpick. That’s probably the least amount of change from fingerstyle picking. if you want to use a regular plectrum with the thumb and forefinger, practice anchoring your pinkie on the guitar top, then eventually add the ring, then middle fingers. That’s the fastest way to retrain your right hand.

7

Flat picking is an art, contrary to what some classical folks think :slight_smile: To be good at it takes a ton of practice and a bit of thinking before it comes naturally.

The first thing with picking is you almost always want to use alternate picking. About the only time you don’t want to use it is when you are doing some pedal tone stuff. An example would be some metal riffs, like Metallica.

There are a ton of exercises out there. The first ones you want to do are simple scales using alternate picking all the time. Up then down all the time. Start with three notes per string and also do pentatonic scales. The next step is string skipping using the same scales with alternate picking. Then move on to arpeggios. Arpeggios are, for me at least, the hardest to pick correctly. It is easy to cheat, sweep pick, etc. When doing arpeggio practice, always alternate and start with short three string exercises. Once you get those down start extending the arpeggios until you are moving across all six strings. Always use alternate picking.Start slow with a metronome. Make sure you can do it smoothly and mistake free. Once you get that down, increase the speed in steps until you lose it. Lather, rinse, repeat daily.

The biggest issue most players I know have with picking is laziness. It is easier to pick the initial note and either hammer on or pull off the rest, especially when playing fast. Hammer ons and pull offs are useful but you get a different tone and feel than when you pick. When working on picking never do hammer ons or pull offs. Pick every note. For a lot of players it takes a while to get used to picking everything.

There are some other things to think about. First, when you are first working on alternate picking you want to think about which stroke to start on, up or down. After a while it will become natural and you’ll start with the correct stroke but when practicing start with both. Also, when string skipping and doing arpeggios, make sure you alternate. String skipping exercises are great for accuracy. An example

-----------------------------------------------------------------5–7–8-
------------------------------------------------5–7–8-------------------
------------------------------4–5–7--------------------4–5–7----------
-----------4–5–7---------------------4–5–7----------------------------
--------------------3–5–7-----------------------------------------------
–3–5–7----------------------------------------------------------------
Pick direction
–u–d–u–>
and
–d–u–d–>

Probably the most frustrating exercise for me is alternate picking arepeggios with one note per string. It takes a while to become proficent at it and it requires more hand movement than doing just scales. Your hand will be moving as you pick so that your hand is positioned over the string you are picking. Doing one note per string gets you used to moving your hand.

A couple things to avoid. First make sure you work on each string and get used to moving your hand. I know a lot of metal heads who are great at alternate picking on the low E and the A but once they get higher than that it falls apart. The reason is they get used to an anchor position with their hand on the bridge. Anchoring your hand with your pinkie is very common but you can also fall into the same trap where moving up to higher strings causes issues. I anchor but it moves with my hand, sometimes my pinkie is on the high e, other times it is on the body of the guitar.

Last, when you are playing an actual piece, run through it slow at first and think about which way the pick should be going for each note. Sometimes you come across pieces where you want to start on an up stroke because it will make part of the piece easier later on. I often change neck positions or picking strokes for certain parts to make the picking more efficient.

If you want more exercises, PM me and I’ll email you some.

Slee

On a side note, my fingerpicking isn’t all that great. I can get by with it and want to improve my skills yet there isn’t quite enough time to work on evertyhing. I respect the heck out of the classical guys and gals who have it mastered, along with the chicken pickin folks.

8

Awesome? :smiley:

Tuck Andress has just about made a science of picking technique. He has written the most comprehensive treatise of the subject I have ever seen. There is no single “correct” picking technique (there are two sides to that coin).

9

Maybe I shouldn’t say this in such a public venue, might be like breaking the magicians code or something, but here we go.

You know how the guys who’ve been flatpicking for 20 or 30 years see some young kid who’s been playing for a year fingerpick a classical piece and wonder out loud “How the hell does he make it sound like there are two or three guitars playing at once. Guy must be some kind of freakin’ wizard.”

Well, he ain’t exactly a wizard. That’s just the way it works. All classical guitar players sound that way, even those who play as poorly as I do. It’s not so much that it’s harder, it’s just different. When you play the bass line with your thumb, you still have three fingers left over the mess around with the melody … and it’s a whole lot easier to wiggle three fingers than it is to pump your whole arm like a speed freak.

Among the reasons I chose the classical route after my first few months of lessons was that it was too hard to use a pick. :wink:

Disclaimer: None of this is meant to detract from a classical guitar player’s right to feel a bit smug when the really good flatpickers are being awed by stuff they think is a lot harder than what they do.

10

Comparing classical guitarists to pop/rock/jazz players who use a pick is like comparing apples to canaries. Each has their attractive features. There are lots of jazz players who cross over into fingerstyle (Joe Pass, Tuck Andress, Steve Herberman). I’m primarily a blues and jazz player but dabble in classical (I’m not very good at the true classical stuff, I’m also a terrible reader. But I do play Classical Gas–despite the title, it’s a pop tune all the way.)

I also recommend listening to Scotty Anderson. He plays in the Chet Atkins school of fingerstyle but he goes at the speed of light.

11

I haven’t had that experience. I’ve been listening to flatpicking for 35 years, attended over 30 National Flatpicking Championships at Winfield, listened to and played with countless flatpickers in jams at festivals and at local gatherings and I have never heard a flatpicker express dumbfounded amazement at the way fingerpicking sounds.

If the “flatpickers” you’ve met do that and talk like you mentioned above, that rather explains your perception. :slight_smile:

For a more accurate representation of good flatpicking, I submit:

Doc Watson explaining how he got into flatpicking fiddle tunes, playing “Black Mountain Rag.” Playing starts at 1:07, high speed at 3:03.

Doc Watson and Jack Lawrence (with David Grisman) playing “Bye Bye Blues.” Note that Doc has some arm motion, Jack has less, but it’s their wrists that really carry it.

Doc playing “Sweet Georgia Brown.” High speed at 1:00.

Chet Atkins (fingerpicking) and Doc (flatpicking) offer a nice comparison of masters of those techniques, here and here.

12

I missed this from a few days ago - sorry.

Hmm - other Dopers have provided some great overviews and links so when it comes to commenting on technique, I leave it to them.

I will add this: practice. I know of no tricks that will substitute or replace long hours. Some smart exercises help - if you do them repetitively, forever.

When I am playing jangly rock songs, there is a kind of arpeggio picking I am after - none of this polite-sounding finger-picky stuff, or a using a pick for careful, harp-like plucking of each chord’s note in succession.

No - I am looking to bang through the chords, creating a riff by high-lighting certain strings within the chords. Bowie’s Rebel Rebel is an example - you’re playing D A E chords and within that there is the main riff - while you typically just play the riff single-note if you play it within the context of the chords you keep the rhythm moving along nicely…

Anyway, so basically I am strumming chords but making specific stops along the way to plop my pick on a string along the way so its note rings out. Man, I tried this for years - but never consistently because I was so bad at it I just assumed I couldn’t do it. But we did a song - a version of The (English) Beat’s Save it for Later, which I do with a D A G chord/riff pattern - and I had to nail it down. So I put my head down, practiced super hard, and got it. Now I can do it fairly easily.

So that is a long-winded way of saying: keep at it! And remember: an unplugged electric in front of the TV is a great way to get your repetitive exercises in without going crazy or getting killed by your family…

13

Concur. As trite as it sounds, it’s really just about practice. There’s no shortcut for that.

14

Some good advice already posted. All I have to add is that there are tutorials on the web that are useful. I have gotten some benefit from doing the exercises for alternate picking on John McNiel’s site.

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Cool, sleestak, that looks like a great way to practice.

I should mention that for soloing, runs, etc., my RH is already pretty good, and I do usually alternate up and down strokes. This came from trying to emulate a fat “jazzy” sound in which nearly every note is plucked. I rarely use hammer-ons or pull-offs, but it seems that there’s so often a trade-off in guitar playing, and in this case it’s that my hammer-ons and pull-offs could do with some improvement. It’s really more with rhythm playing and vamping where I have the problem, because stumbling with the pick makes it impossible to keep in good time.

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I meant that approaching the arpeggio as a slowed down strum hadn’t worked. But following your suggestion to “dig down” has helped quite a bit.

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I’m late to this thread too, and I see lots of good advice upthread already, so I’ll just reiterate some of it with a story.

When I got my 2nd guitar, I was already singing and playing sax in a band. We had written a couple of tunes and one of them, the guitar player wanted to do a rhythm and a lead part. I said “Great! just teach me where to put my fingers and I’ll play the rhythm and you can solo like a madman!”

Well, the guitar player told me no, it would actually be easier to teach me how to play a solo than rhythm, and damned if he wasn’t right. The recordings of my meager efforts were impressive enough that I decided I finally needed to get that 2nd guitar and start really learning for myself how to play.

Anyway, once I got the guitar, I took it to practice, and I was told “Pick both ways. I see you only strumming down, and you should really practice strumming and picking in both directions.”

I thought that made good enough sense, but I was told WHY it was good advice. This guy had never really taken lessons, had more or less just sat down with magazines and friends and had been in punk bands since he was like 13 years old. And he never strummed or picked up. Ever. And now that he actually knew somewhat about the instrument and about music and songwriting, it was frustrating as hell for him to try and overcome nearly a decade of poor habit to try and learn how to up-pick.

So, ever since, I’ve always practiced picking and strumming both directions. I know I’m no ace, but I also know that more than one guy I’ve jammed with has said “holy fuck how do you do that?”

ETA: Practice, practice, practice.

18

Now that the OP has pretty much been answered I’d like to respond a bit to Gary T.

First of all, those are some awesome links; good stuff. However (yeah, there’s a however), the Chet & Doc video fails as an example of a flatpicker not moving his arm much. Notice that Chet’s arm really doesn’t move, just a tiny bit of hand motion, while you can see motion all the way up to Doc’s shoulder.

And I was really talking about classical guitar music, not generic fingerpicking, Travis picking, country/finger style, whatever – probably not many classical guitarists playing at the Flatpicking festival.

A couple of links – the first is a piece most every classical player has learned somewhere in the first six months or so, played by someone with six months experience. I chose it not because it is great but because it shows a typical student playing a beginner’s piece. She has posted quite a few videos and you can see her progress over the course of a few years, if you wish.

Andante by Fernando Sor, Opus 35, No 1

And here is another beginner’s piece, this time played by a more accomplished musician. I chose this one because it clearly demonstrates the multiple voices that seem to bring on the comments I mentioned earlier even though it’s not fast or fancy. Also, notice that the forearm is actually resting on the guitar; very little motion, certainly no muscles moving all the way to the shoulder.

menuet de Johann-Philipp Krieger

And please understand, I am not being snarky. I can’t do what you do either.

19

Precious few, but I have run into a few there, to my surprise. I do have a friend who plays some classical, so I have a bit of exposure to it.

Yeah, on his right arm, but his left arm – that elbow probably moved an aggregate half mile on that piece. :wink:

Actually, it’s interesting to compare that to the flatpickers, who seem to have nearly stationary left arms while their left fingers fly like crazy.

Likewise, and you may regard me too kindly. I don’t flatpick, I’ve just heard a mess of it. I strum chords to accompany my singing.

Thanks for your links. I enjoy the discussion.

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Gary T -

  • What kinda acoustic guitars you got? Sounds like you are pretty into flatpickin’ - anything fun and cool? When **picker **hung out on the SDMB (currently on a bit of hiatus) I know he was a great player with cool gear; I think **Pork Rind **has a Huss & Dalton - a great small-batch guitar…

  • I assume you’ve read Clapton’s Guitar by Allen St. John…any thoughts?