Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Picking Techniques
Lately my picking technique seems to be improving by leaps and bounds, both with pick and fingers.
I've always felt my pickng/strumming (i.e. right) hand has been the stronger of my two. Weakness or lack of dexterity in the chording (left) hand is a typical stumbling block for many an aspiring guitar player, and I was no exception.
Now it seems, the older I get, the better I am becoming at various strumming and picking techniques, including, of all things, fingerpicking. It's only within the last year or so that I find myself being able to co-ordinate more than one finger at time on various strings - very much an impossible feat for me prior. How jealous I was of the kids (kids!!) who decades ago could pluck out the intro to Stairway to Heaven, while I was still stuck on that third-finger-on-the-third-fret G major chord my brother taught me when I was eight. Not only was I hopeless at the chord formation, there was no way I could get my right hand to do the (intricate) picking part.
Well, guess what? I can now play the intro to Stairway to Heaven. In open-D tuning. My God, it's beautiful. I mean I can really play it.
I believe things really started to come along for me when I stopped practicing guitar on my electric(s). I kind of forced myself to have an acoustic lying around for strummin' purposes. This in turn led me to strum and/or pick without a pick - as there wasn't always a plectrum handy.
Keep in mind, to that point, my acoustics stayed tuned to standard. Open-D was my electric specialty. Even on stage, when with the Highway Hepcats we would to an acoustic miniset, I was strummin' in standard tuning (no leads).
Finally, at home, many years after the Hepcats, I decided to retune my acoustic to the D-A-D-F#-A-D. This was revolutionary for me, and rather alien feeling for me, given my decades long standard tuning third-finger-on-the-third-fret G major chord experience. But as I got comfy with open-D on acoustic, and stopped having a pick around, lo and behold, my fingers started to get to work.
I'm no finger-picker yet, I must emphasize. But my new found capability combined with the sweet sounds of open-D tuning, makes me feel like a new guitar player altogether. I just have to move on from Stairway to Heaven, that's all.
I've always felt my pickng/strumming (i.e. right) hand has been the stronger of my two. Weakness or lack of dexterity in the chording (left) hand is a typical stumbling block for many an aspiring guitar player, and I was no exception.
Now it seems, the older I get, the better I am becoming at various strumming and picking techniques, including, of all things, fingerpicking. It's only within the last year or so that I find myself being able to co-ordinate more than one finger at time on various strings - very much an impossible feat for me prior. How jealous I was of the kids (kids!!) who decades ago could pluck out the intro to Stairway to Heaven, while I was still stuck on that third-finger-on-the-third-fret G major chord my brother taught me when I was eight. Not only was I hopeless at the chord formation, there was no way I could get my right hand to do the (intricate) picking part.
Well, guess what? I can now play the intro to Stairway to Heaven. In open-D tuning. My God, it's beautiful. I mean I can really play it.
I believe things really started to come along for me when I stopped practicing guitar on my electric(s). I kind of forced myself to have an acoustic lying around for strummin' purposes. This in turn led me to strum and/or pick without a pick - as there wasn't always a plectrum handy.
Keep in mind, to that point, my acoustics stayed tuned to standard. Open-D was my electric specialty. Even on stage, when with the Highway Hepcats we would to an acoustic miniset, I was strummin' in standard tuning (no leads).
Finally, at home, many years after the Hepcats, I decided to retune my acoustic to the D-A-D-F#-A-D. This was revolutionary for me, and rather alien feeling for me, given my decades long standard tuning third-finger-on-the-third-fret G major chord experience. But as I got comfy with open-D on acoustic, and stopped having a pick around, lo and behold, my fingers started to get to work.
I'm no finger-picker yet, I must emphasize. But my new found capability combined with the sweet sounds of open-D tuning, makes me feel like a new guitar player altogether. I just have to move on from Stairway to Heaven, that's all.
