The Steel Guitar Forum

Is there a reason that steel players tend to favor using thumb, index, and middle? Does this descend from Scruggs style banjo playing? Why not use the ring finger to enable 4 note block chords akin to piano?

Joe Wright uses a thumb pick and 3 finger picks.Joe has a very unique picking style and uses wide grips for chord voicings.

There are several players who use 3 finger picks. Of particular note Maurice Anderson IIRC. I have tried them over the years, but never stuck with it long enough to be proficient at it.

I started with the conventional 2 picks method because that's all I knew about and it's hard to overcome the muscle memory and routine already ingrained in my gourd.

I think the 3 picks method has many benefits and I think it would have worked well for me if I had started with it.

I struggle with the habit of playing dyads when I should really play single notes. You'd be doing me a favor most days by taking one of my picks away.

Gary Morse too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSqIfXA4gyA

When I started learning C6 I couldn't get the hang of the pick-two-rake-two technique for 4-part chords, so I went for the extra pick. I soon found that it was easier to play grips like 3,5,6 as T-1-3. (I have a strong third finger from playing brass instruments.)

I found it had uses on E9 too, and now I play a uni I'd be lost without it.

I curl my ring finger under and use it for blocking, it's probably a bad habit that I picked up early in my psg 'career', so I'm stuck with using just two fingerpicks and a thumbpick

Also, Tommy Roots had a course called 4 X 10 (4 fingers and 10 strings) That was 30 years ago.

Ian Rae wrote:
I found it had uses on E9 too, and now I play a uni I'd be lost without it.

While I don't wear picks, I use the thumb and 3 fingers approach on my extended E9 12 string. No way I could play my solo pedal steel chord & melody arrangements with only a thumb & 2 fingers

4 note chords it is nice to accentuate notes with pedal changes like on C6th, B6th universal pedals 5&6.

Richard, bad habit?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jpwlgwlAi8&t=526s

Classical & jazz guitar players use them all, of course.

Before I started the PSG, I played some guitar (mostly nylon classical but a bit of Jazz in my 20s). Fingernails of course.

Tried briefly to use three picks, but was awkward. And the repertoire doesn't usually lend itself to that?

Does anyone know of Youtube videos showing the use of three picks-where we can see it well?

I used three picks for quite a while. Like Ian said the grips are easier in ways.
I play alot of fingerstyle guitar too with three fingers.
I teach guitar and encourage my students to make use of their ring finger.

BUT...steel guitar is a different animal. This year I started really rebuilding right hand technique and sorting out my right hand position a little more.
I've been using 2 fingerpicks and relearning all those grips that I thought would be impossible with just two fingers. ( Having no gigs because of Covid really afforded me the time to explore this. )
I'm finding that 2 picks allows for more agility in ways as it is simplified and lighter.
It also makes palm blocking a little more natural with less metal on the hand I find.

In my experience, the three picks approach puts the hand in a flatter palm down position and the back edge of the hand has alot further to travel to mute the strings.
Ive watched Maurice Anderson's technique and he seemes to palm block pretty naturally with three picks though.
Julian Tharpe also used 3 picks.

Tom Morrel, Rick Schmidt, Earnest Bovine, Joe Wright.
That’s good company.
I sometimes sit down to try something with out picks, and end up playing with 3 fingers and thumb. Blocking is easier. I like 4 note chords.
Since the pandemic, I lost my acrylic nails when the salons closed. The nails actually got a nice sound, but I don’t think they would last on the fatter C6 strings I’m attempting to learn of late.
I may go for an extra pick someday. I prefer it to the rake.
John

Andrew Frost wrote:In my experience, the three picks approach puts the hand in a flatter palm down position and the back edge of the hand has alot further to travel to mute the strings.

That isn't my experience at all, but everyone's hands are different shapes and sizes so it's fruitless to generalise

I think that whatever suits the sound you're after is what's right for you. I started playing with bare fingers because finger picks felt so foreign to me. When I started committing to the use of finger picks (because I value the tone it provides), I included my ring finger because I figured more was always better.

It didn't take long for me to realize that if I took my ring finger out of the picture, I got "clearer" sounding results by allowing no more than three notes to be plucked at a time.

I fully appreciate that some want more options and most are smarter than me when it comes to constructing chord voicings. However, I came to realize that for what I really want to hear, "less is more".

I see Andrew's point. I was taught the JF right hand curl so that does position the ring finger differently than does the eagle claw. The R & P fingers needs to move forward a bit to clear a tad of space for the way I play.


I agree that it depends on your style and what you want to do with it. For single string runs, T, M, I is enough to get me in trouble with "gun jamming" sometimes. For big full orchestral grips and some other things, I think the 3 finger pick can be very useful.

I always try to encourage people to try sensible alternative ideas even though the tried and true is sometimes the safer. Best to try and fail than not know.

I started from the very beginning with Reece and he put me in three fingerpicks and thumb. His explanation if I remember correctly was the ability to claw big chords, such as he was remembered for on a U-12.

Over the years, I played that way but never could make full use of the third finger except to use it to pick the top F# and occasionally the D# chromatic. I couldn't make it work for me pulling four strings at the same time.

I have moved to a D-10 now and in the last two weeks, am working to dispose of the third fingerpick and it seems to help me a bit more with blocking near the changer...perhaps due to an altered curve of the hand.

Curly Chalker was widely known as the "chord king" of pedal steel guitarists. IMHO, no pedal steel player has ever surpassed him in this aspect of playing, and he played more chords and played them better than most all of us could ever hope to do. And yet, he used only 2 finger picks.

Go figure.

Hello all. Here’s a newbie question about thumb picks: I’m wondering how many of you, if you were starting over, would start out using three picks plus thumb? Or would you focus on the two and maybe add the third later? (I’m sixty-five years old. I just want to shut my eyes and play)

When I play acoustic or nylon I pick with three and sometimes my pinky, too. I use two on the square neck.

Also, does anyone use plastic finger picks? I use them on my squareneck because I like the mellower attack. I trimmed them back.

I realize that this is all a matter of personal preference and there’s no Wright answer. But, I’m just wondering what you guys who know….know.

I used 3 finger picks for years. Then I tried out using only 2 and liked it better. The benefits were with blocking and harmonics in my case. I did loose some 4 note chord voicing options. Honestly either one will work fine.

My first teacher in LA, John Bidasio, got me started with 3 finger picks. And I had played some classical guitar so that made sense, as Jon points out. Finger 3 is long; why not use it?

Like Richard, I curl my little finger under.

Three finger picks allow nice open chord voicings (I play Extended E9); and like Dean, I use finger 3 (the a in the classical terms of p, i, m, a ) to catch the F# and D# strings.