Finger pick difficulties

[Drake Richardson]

Hello there,
I am having a difficult time using the finger picks, seems i just cannot pick with them on, i do better when i do not wear them. Do i need to buckle down and use them more to get use to them? is there anyone else that just uses the thumb pick and not the finger picks?

[Richard Sinkler]

Yep. Practice, practice, practice. It will feel natural to uou after time. But ther are some players that don't use picks. When I don't use picks, it sounds dark and crappy to me. But that's another thing that gets better with time and practice.

[Christopher Woitach]

Richard said it perfectly - there lots of people who don't use picks, and it seems to work many of them (Bobbe Seymor is a great example), but Reece Anderson put it well when I put the same question to him - "Christopher, you will, of course, make your individual choice, but I think you should look at it in terms of percentages. In my experience, your highest percentage of success in tone, speed, and clarity comes from the use of finger picks on the steel guitar." He advocated the use of thumb and 3 finger picks, as do I, but that's pretty controversial around here....

Keep trying - you can always take them off eventually

[Erv Niehaus]

Playing a steel guitar without picks is like trying to eat a steak without teeth.

[Drake Richardson]

Thanks guys I will indeed keep practicing with the finger picks!

[Rich Upright]

Saw Buddy play once at the Armonk convention without finger OR thumbpicks, and he sounded fantastic as usual. But then again, it was BUDDY.

[Lane Gray]

I can play without picks and get my tone. But it slows me down, as I have to make the string dig a bit into the fingertip, and SNAP free. But I don't recommend it.

[Steve Vroman]

I struggled with picks for some time and thought that I would be one of those people who didn't use them. A little practice and perseverance, now I prefer them over playing without

[Dick Chapple Sr]

I play ukulele with finger tips, no picks.
On lap and pedal steel I have always used picks.
I did have problems with picks for a long time until I finally had some that fit correctly. My big change came (for me) when I began using the NP2 national picks, they are so light, I feel as though they are almost not there. I also like the kelly orange speed thumb pick.

[Ian Rae]

Drake - bearing in mind that everyone's hands and fingers are different shapes and sizes, this may be no help at all!

I started with Dunlop picks because they were all I could get in a hurry, but they were comfortable and sounded good. Then I bought Jeff Newman's Right Hand Alpha course, and encountered the problem of the relatively wide bands catching the string above if you adopt the correct hand position. So I got some Newman picks and they worked a treat and sounded great, except the narrow band didn't give enough grip on my index finger.

So now I'm on NP2s which are as comfortable as Dunlops, as narrow as Newmans, and sound easily as good as either; so you could cut the journey short and go straight to them. Many folks have never used anything else. I'm still tweaking them for best fit. Get a good pair of round-nosed pliers - you will become firm friends.

Reece Anderson....advocated the use of thumb and 3 finger picks....but that's pretty controversial around here....

Is it controversial? I don't recall anyone coming out and saying that you shouldn't use three if you want to.

[Bobby D. Jones]

The biggest problem I have seen with finger picks is the diamond or round holes punched in the bands. If you just try to bend them with pliers the holes act like hinges in the band. They bend into a hex sort of shape. Then the little angles at the bends stick out and catch the pick on the next finger and the picks will go flying off. If you have small fingers trim the bands of a new pick to fit and not overlap. Then smooth any corners with a fine file and emery cloth and bend any corners on the ends that may dig in your finger. Then take steel rod a little smaller than your fingers, Clamp it tight in a vice with about 3/4 inch extended past the jaws of the vice. Then with a small hammer hold the pick and hit it light fast licks and bend the whole pick smoothly (especially the solid area between the holes) into an oval that looks like the end of your finger. Keep hammering the pick slowly till it is snugging on your finger. Then do the final fit till they are snug, comfortable and solid on your finger. Comfortable, good fitting picks are the best friends a Banjo or Steel Player can have. Happy Steelin

[richard burton]

Without wanting to patronise, it has been known for new players to wear their picks incorrectly
The first image shows the incorrect way

[Jimmy Gibson]

The problem I still have after 40+years playing is keeping the bloody things on.lol


Jimmy.

[Micky Byrne]

Many players wet their fingers a little before putting their picks on and commencing to play Grandad

Micky "scars" Byrne U.K.

[Richard Wilhelm]

I use a regular pick with one or two finger picks on my middle and index finger. My favorite sounding pick is a Dunlop or Fender nylon 1 mil, striking the fat part of the pick. I also play an old Fender steel with wider string spacing. I like the sound of the regular pick over the thumb pick and the wider spacing makes it easier to play. There''s more than one way to fall off a horse.

[Howard Steinberg]

It might pay for you to try the Fred Kelly speed pick for your thumb. I find this pick very easy to control due to the small blade. It virtually eliminates catching a string on the back of the pick blade. Not a total fix to your problem but it could help things along. Going along with this, I tried the Ernie Ball Pickys, a metal fingerpick which has a small blade. These provided me with no improvement over the Nationals that I've been using forever. Essentially it's time and practice, as others have stated.

[Erv Niehaus]

I like to buy and try different picks.
It's a lot cheaper than guitars to buy and try.

[Stu Schulman]

Interesting thread,My friend's son came by a while ago to check out my pedal steel guitar,I asked him if he played with picks?So I tried to fit some picks on him then noticed a while later that he was playing without picks,I'm pretty sure when I started my brain rejected playing with picks...I think that I just put them on for hours at a time to get used to them.When I moved to Texas my next door neighbor Josh Dubin would come over and try to show me licks etc,And he never had picks with him although he plays with picks ,He can also play without them....Weird I wish that I could do that.

[Robert Daniels]

One thing that made all the difference when I was starting out was to have a more experienced player help you bend the picks in the right shape. There are several ways people like, but many like the pick bent over so it follows the shape of the fingertip. When your hand is in the right position to pick-block the picks strike at the right angle. That and some Jeff Newman exercises made a huge improvement in my right hand.I'm still a newbie at 3 years and many opinions and ways to skin this cat.

[Richard Sinkler]

Without wanting to patronise, it has been known for new players to wear their picks incorrectly
The first image shows the incorrect way

In all seriousness, that top picture, A drummer in a band I was in, bought a steel guitar. At a gig, he wanted to try my guitar. That is how he had his picks on. I asked him if he found picking hard to do. Then I told him he had the picks on backwards. Amazing that a good musician, on drums, keyboards, AND YES - GUITAR, could make that mistake.

[Jerry Horch]

The top picture is correct.....for nose picking

[Dave Magram]

I agree with Robert D. I believe that the blade angle is very important for optimal accuracy, speed, and ergonomics. Ideally, the pick-blade should strike the string and smoothly glide off it. If the angle of the blade is too straight, the blade "slams" into the string instead of gliding off it. The optimal “striking zone” is within 3/16” from the end of the pick-blade.

BLADE-ANGLE: Many fingerpicks come “out of the box” at about a 55-degree angle, which is probably fine for playing the autoharp. For playing steel guitar, somewhere around 30 degrees seems optimal, depending on your picking style. I have done a bit of experimenting and found that just one or two degrees from the optimal angle for me will affect accuracy and/or speed.

A couple of years ago, Bobby Black kindly allowed me to trace the blade-angle of his fingerpicks: 35 degrees from the “striking zone” at the blade-tip to the pick-band.

The screenshot below is of Paul Franklin’s hands at 2:48 of “Time Jumpers - Dawn Sears - If you're gonna do me wrong do it right”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cixiEyfeJSg



I printed out the screenshot and measured the angle from the "striking zone" at the tip of the blade to the pick-band with a protractor: approximately a 26 degree blade-angle for both of Paul’s fingerpicks.
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COMFORT: The “secret” to keeping the fingerpicks on comfortably is a needle-nose pliers. When I begin using a new pair of fingerpicks (about every 10 years or so), I spend about 20 minutes carefully re-shaping and slightly tapering the bands so they fit my fingers like little gloves.
Then, with a small file, I put a single notch in the band of my index fingerpick so even in the dark I can tell which is which. I then adjust the blade-angle to my traced “blueprint”.

The final trick to comfort, keeping the picks on, and not getting an inflamed fingernail groove is something I learned on the SGF years ago; I bought a pack of self-adhesive, silicon eyeglass nose pads from the drugstore (about $2 for 10 pads). I cut one of the pads in half and put each half inside the pick-band of one of my fingerpicks exactly where the pick-band crosses my fingernail groove. Repeat the process for the other fingerpick. I replace the pads when they lose their cushioning effect (about every 6 or 8 months).

-Dave

[John Billings]

Erv said, "like trying to eat a steak without teeth."

Hey! I do that!
JB

[John Billings]

I have seen guys who wear their picks with them sticking way beyond their fingertips. I like mine to be as close to my fingertips as possible, so it almost feels like I'm picking bare-fingered. I certainly move faster when they're fitted like that. I wear them rotated at a slight angle so that they hit the strings with the flat, not the edge. And I pick pretty hard. My index pick is double-bladed

[Carl Mesrobian]

I like them very close, as if my fingers are steel (haha). I have also used only a thumb pick with good results - depends on the sound I want and how my mood suits me. How's that for being an artist?