Originally Posted by: nixonpcaI've been playing for many years, but not particularly well, so I joined GT to try and up my game a bit. But I know I have lots of bad habits I may need to unlearn.
One of them involves holding the pick. I got into the habit of holding the pick with both the forefinger and middle finger opposite the thumb. Suspect I am also holding it too hard.
Everything I've seen suggests that this is really not the best way to hold a pick. I'm trying to figure out how much of an issue it is and whether there are some specific drills that would help me learn the correct way of holding it.
Thanks for any ideas anyone has on that score.
You've seen the way to hold a pick between the tips/ends of the index finger and the thumb. It probably doesn't feel natural to do so now if you try it. I'd suggest to help you over that hump is to do what I call the 'pickless pick hold'. That is to say; look at a video of how to hold a pick, emulate that but, strum the guitar without the pick. Don't whack at the strumming doing that because you don't want to shred your fingers!
I don't always want to play with a pick (for various reasons) but I do this and still strum as normal like I had a pick. What this will do us get you used to holding your fingers in the proper way without the frustration of the pick getting pulled from between your fingers. Just don't make this your primary way of playing. Don't wait too long to introduce a pick.
Something else you'll want to work with is; how much of the pick tip do you expose from between your thumb/index. I don't let a whole heck of alot of the pick expose. If you let too much expose, physics takes over and the pick wants to come out. So, you want to work with that a bit.
Just take your time and mess around with not only what fingers you use but how you hold the pick and at what angle the pick comes out between your fingers and so on.
The shorter answer is; you gotta mess around in order to get to the right place.
