I have a dirty little secret

Tonedef

Years ago, when I was still knee-high to a leprechaun, I was listening in on an adult discussion about music and guitar playing in general. One of the men, who used to carry around his guitar with him, dropped the following little bomb.

According to him, strumming was for wannabes, and that picking, particularly finger picking, was where it was at.

Now, naive as I was, how could I not believe this nugget of wisdom from someone who carried his guitar around everywhere? :?

Of course, now I know that the guy was talking complete horseshyte, but I have to admit that for years afterwards, it coloured my view of guitar playing styles, and even now as I'm learning to play for the first time, I'm subconsciously avoiding learning to strum and am focusing exclusively on picking.

That's my dirty little secret, and I hope y'all will give it a good kicking to get it out of my system. ?

[deleted]

Strumming is lightning-fast picking.

MikeM

Catalinbread pedals are awesome ?

Bob-Dubery

Well there's some truth to this because once you're not using JUST a plectrum you can start doing stuff that involves different parts, simultaneous notes on non-adjacent strings etc. Things get very good if you want to do self-accompanying stuff because you can have a bass line and a melody line.

But you lose too. The thumb nor any one finger can't do up strokes AND down strokes like the plectrum can.

Probably the most versatile technique is hybrid picking. Pick held between thumb and index finger and middle and ring fingers kept available for picking on demand. This gives you the up and down strokes, the ability to strum and the ability to do a picked bass and melody thing, or to play double, even triple stops.

Perhaps the guys who really have all bases covered are the likes of Chet Atkins and Martin Simpson who use a thumb pick with a hybrid technque - that allows them to revert to regular finger picking with a total of 4 digital extremities available.

Bob-Dubery

X-rated Bob wrote: Perhaps the guys who really have all bases covered are the likes of Chet Atkins and Martin Simpson who use a thumb pick with a hybrid technque - that allows them to revert to regular finger picking with a total of 4 digital extremities available.

But then playing like that you can't get effects by varying your grip on the pick etc.

No one method does it all.

guidothepimmp

my dirty little secret is i yearn to play rasguedo like gabriela... man that rasguedo and percussion is the business