Category: Jam Session
Hi all,
when I played the guitar, our landlord brought me a set of picks, but I just can't play the guitar with a pick. the pick almost gets caught in the strings, and I can't feel what string I'm on, i'd so much rather play it with my fingers. So how about anyone else? am I the only blind person who can't play the guitar with a pick? or is it that way with all blind people.
wonderwoman
I don't play the guitar, but I would phink it'd be hard to find the right strings with a pick. (just my opinion. *smiles*) So, if I did play the guitar, I'd prefer to play it with my hands. But also, I probably wouldn't play it all the time anyway, but that's just me. *smiles*
Well, I started learning the guitar just two weeks after i turned 21. It was A an insentive to stop biting my bloody nails and B I wanted to learn a popular musical instrument. I still bite my nails now, so I sometimes find a pick or plectrum as we call it, easier than my fingers. It takes the skin off the fingers of my left hand though
You get used of using a pic with the guitar over time and you can gage string distances etc through memorization. There isn't space to go into detail right now but I'll get in touch with you and give you some tips on getting used to it if you want. There are simple block chord strumming and various arpedgio exercises that will help a lot...
thanks guitar god, but I haven't played the guitar in a while, so am reallyrusty, and I'd still rather play it with my hands if and when I do take it back up again, but thanks anyway,
wonderwoman
Okay whatever works for you. If you change your mind in the future, just get in touch.
Finger picking and playing with a pick are definitely two very different styles and ideally one should master both of them. I don't think it's a matterof being blind how good you are with the pick, sighted people need to practice a lot to get the hang of that too. I started out not using a pick but after 6 months and realizing that my guitar playing sounded awful for any kind of electric guitar playing and strumming I picked up the pick (nice pun <grin>) and I've become very comfortable using it over the years. You can also get very good and clean sound from acoustic finger picking and it's beautiful but there's a time and place for every style. For stuff I do in our band I often need to use a pick or even a 25-cent coin to get the desired sounds out of my guitar, scratching and weird effects/atmospherics, with a delay pedal, a whammy and basic chorus/flanger you can really create some amazing sound scapes if you are inventive and just do whatever comes to mind with your guitar.
cheers
-B
I've been learning to play classic guitar for the last seven months, and not long ago my teacher tried to show me how to hold a pick and use it, since one of the picking techniques is similar to the techniques that electric guitar players use. She even had a difficulty explaining to me how to use it. In fact, even though I use my fingers only, I often block the strings from resonating, since I always feel an unaware need to feel where I am. It might take me quite long to get used to everything and improve my techniques, but I don't have much time to devote to that purpose.
Well, I don't know if this helps, but when you first start out with uising a pick, try to use a soft pick first. It may allow you to feel the strings more. but that could alays be reversed. I know some people who prefer using the hard picks or mediums due to their stability. But as to the soft pick thing, that's just my preference...I just found it hard to strum with a medium pick.
Hope that helps!
I find the soft pick is nice for strumming and, yes, more senstivie, but it does make plucking a little more tricky since many are just too soft to really allow you to pick the strings.
But, like everything else, it's a matter of time, it takes time to figure this out, time and patience.
cheers
-B
to be honest with most blind people be it banjo and guitar they prefer fingers me i can't do it! Started playig base with my fingers but any other instrument no way a good tip with the pick is to hold it between finger and thumb and keep a steady grip on it not a tight grip just enough to keep it steady. Relax your wrist and use the pointed end to pick of course. As for knowing what string your on rest the pick against the sixth string when u begin picking. That gives you a startling line.
I have found that a pick is better than using my fingers because I can get a louder, crisper sound with a pick. A guitar instructor said that I should angle the pick slightly when I play, and that I should begin playing even notes by alternating up and down on one note. For example, you would play the g note on the sixth string by picking toward the bottom of the guitar, and then picking away from the bottom of the guitar. The goal is to make sure that the sound is even and that you can't tell which way you're picking.
Yeah, that is called alternate picking. A good exercise for that is to play 2 octave scales with alternate picking. String skipping 16th notes is also a very good exercise to build up speed but if people want to talk about guitar technique, then we should start a new board topic! Rock on everybody!
Wow, interesting comments. I just got out of another post discusing guitar, and I probably have little business doing so, as I don't play much guitar nowadays. Having disqualified my comments, I use finger picks on occasion on the autoharp, my fingers and various picks when played guitar. For want of a better word, when I'm not near the instrument, I "vvisualize" myself, and where my hands and fingers are. Great way to stay awake in boring meetings too. In other words, if I am thinking about playing a solid E-chord on the guitar, I concentrate on every aspect of it. How my hands feel around the kneck of the instrument, where on the frets my finger need to be, my right hand strumming fast or slow from highest to lowest string, the sound, etc. Kinda like an athelete preparing him/herself for an event. Point being that when I get to the instrument, my mindset is thinking about what I'm doing before I pick up the instrument.
Optimum Voice from cablevision is the service I have. I swear by them, but my sister and her friends swear at them. Basically their issue is if you are on a call with another OV user, you can't use 3-way calling, which everyone uses liberally.
Oh fucking hell!
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I can't hold a regular pick that well in my hand, so when I am doing mostly strumming songs, I have this certain kind of pick that slides onto your thumb like a thumb ring and then sticks out like a regular pick would. I'm a blink, so I can tell what string I'm on pretty easily. The hard thing for me is the frets and doing four fingered chords or barre chords, especially because I have short-ass hands and stubby-ass fingers!
You might look at a guitar with a smaller kneck on it. When I was little, I had small hands, and hated that I couldn't play guitar. My father bought me this really lousy instrument, but I didn't care, because I could play it.
Lou
I have a guitar that's three quarters the size of a regular guitar, so that works OK, but maybe if I could find a half size, I'd get that. I think it's easier to do that with acoustics as the only close electrics I've found are short scale ones with less frets
A few years ago, I saw some "backpacker" guitars. Some sounded better than others, ahtough non had the warmpth of a regular instrument. I was amazed that they sounded as good as they did. If that's a compromise you can live with, they might be worth checking out.
Lou
Well my guitar I'd say, is between half and three quarters the size of a regular guitar. Main thing is though, I can play it without wrapping my right arm round my neck because the guitar itself is bigger than the space between my knee and my chest.
For the travel guitars, the baby Taylor and the Martin lxm are very nice for the money. Don't go with the original martin backpacker though, quite overpriced and the body design leaves a lot to be desired!
Guitar God, thanks for the info on the Martin in particular. I must have seen the original, and couldn't believe it was a Martin. At the time I saw them, I think it was either the Epiphone or Ovation that I saw that surprised me. Both sounded way better than the Martin.
Lou
um sorry but what is a back-packer guitar?