Pick Holding

How to hold your pick

If you want to hold your pick right, there are two basic ways. closed fingers - make a fist with your 'pickhand' and hold your thumb up.
- place the pick on your index finger and make sure it's in the right direction(watch the picture)
- place your thumb on it and your done!

open fingers make a fist with your pickhand and hold your thumb up.

- place the pick on your index finger and make sure it's in the right direction
- place your thumb on it.

- now open all your fingers but the indexfinger and thump and there you go!

Ways of picking

There are many ways of picking, I'll describe the most common, down picking and alternative picking.

Down picking: This way of picking is fairly easy, just start holding your pick above the string and move it down untill it rings. Then go up again and make a downstroke again. Of course you can do this on all strings.

Alternative picking: This way of picking combines down and upstrokes, so take your pick and hold it above the string, now move it down and get a ring, then move up again to get another ring. This picking is also used on all strings.

You normally should use alternative picking, it's a bit harder in the beginning, and it's also twice as fast. Downstroking is used for creating a more heay sound. So it's up to you!