Gallop Picking Options

[Mike RR24]

Ben,

I wanted to ask you.. When I picked the guitar I used to kind of ball my hand up as this was the most comfortable natural way for me to want to pick.

That being said I am finding that opening and hanging my fingers is allowing me to gallop pick much more successfully although it feels akward in playing Power/Bar Chords this way as I'm not used to it. When I do that it seems to create some type of balance that I was lacking before trying to gallop pick in mid air if you will with no platform of balance. I think what I need to do is learn to play the chords again with this new way of picking because I have made more progress in one night than I made in weeks picking the other way I used to.

I've heard beofre that you should not change the way you pick but use the natural way your hand wants to go but this goes againist my technical abilities. Am I making any sense here at all ?? Just trying to explain how this is working for me and if I should almost relearn my picking to be able to better pick overall. I think if I had learned this in the beginning I would not be struggling as much now.

[Ben Higgins]

Hi Mike, sorry for the delay.

That sounds great. I also find that when I do fast gallops that my fingers want to hang loose as well. There's nothing wrong with that at all. I'm also of the belief that you don't have to have the exact same finger off/finger on positions for every single technique. Whatever enables you to get the different jobs done is the answer !

However, I don't think it would take you long to apply the same 'fingers loose' approach to basic chord riffing as either way you're still not putting the fingers themselves on the guitar, so there's not much difference in your actual hand position at all. You're not 'anchoring' your hand to the guitar body so there isn't much of an adjustment to make. Keep going with your gallop approach and you might find that it gradually seeps its way into your general playing if it allows you much better precision and control

Whatever way it goes, it sounds cool to me and there's nothing wrong with it.

P.S. When I say about letting my fingers hand loose I do literally mean 'loose', not stiffly bunched up together and out straight like Kirk Hammet for example. Whenever I've tried that to see what it feels like, it feels totally unnatural to me and it feels as if it would slow me down.. so don't stretch your fingers out straight, just let them hang

This post has been edited by Ben Higgins: Feb 16 2012, 07:46 PM