Pick Issue

Heya GMC!

I've been playing guitar for 2 years now, and I've recently started to really evaluate my playing and searching for flaws and working on phasing them out and such. And it's recently gotten to me that I might not be holding my pick/plectrum the optimal way.

Let me straighten things out with a picture. You can find a picture of how I hold my pick following THIS link and another angle can be found HERE.

As you can see, I hold the pick between my thumb and index finger and really tuck it in there. When I pick, let's say the E-string, my thumb will be touching the A string, as you can see in the picture. One thing that struck me while practising tonight is that this might be causing unneccessary friction while changing strings, and maybe even when just picking one string while let's say tremolo picking it.

I reckon this might be a disadvantage yeah? How should one really properly hold the pick for maximum comfort and speed and such? Please help me figure out how to reposition the way I hold my pick!

I've been concerned about the way I hold the pick for quite some time now but I can't figure out how to improve it. Need some help here!!

Thanks in advance!

// Frobb

Weird String Breakage (floyd Rose)

Heya fellow GMCers,

here's my situation:

I own an ESP LTD M-400 with a Floyd Rose bridge and I have pretty much as long as I've owned the guitar had this weird string breaking problem. (I use kinda thin strings (Super Slinkys to be exact), in case that information is relevant)

The thing that happens to me is that the strings sort of break... They don't get cut in two per se. It's more like the string gets too much pressure and it flattens out, if that makes any sense. It's still attached down by the bridge, but the string gets all stretched out and super thin right where it was attached, making it all flabby and results in the whole guitar is outta tone (gotta love Floyd Roses eh?).

I hope you understand how I mean, it's sort of hard to explain it haha. Hopefully ( ) some of you guys have had the same thing happen to your strings sometime so you know what I mean.

What exactly is causing this?
I'm having a gig in 2 weeks and having this happen to me that night wouldn't be that awesome hehe.

Thanks in advance!

A Question About Tension And/or Arm Getting Tired...

Hey fellow GMCers,
I've got this question I've been wondering about for a couple of weeks or so.

Chromatic excercises are a part of my practicing schedule and I do classics such as "1234", "1324" and "1423". Meaning, if we take "1234" for instance, that I play frets 1234 from low E to high E, and then reversing the pattern and going 4321 from high E to low E, and continues the same thing down the fretboard all the way to fret 12, and then going back to fret 1. You get the picture!

A couple of weeks ago I started doing this at 110 bpm, playing sixteenth notes, and when I do these excercises at this tempo I tend to get a tiring feeling in my right arm when I've done the excercise for a couple of minutes or so.

Is this tiring feeling a sign of my arm being tense while playing this and that I've pushed myself too hard? Or is it simply that I haven't developed the endurance required for doing these kind of things at this speed for a longer period of time?

Thanks in advance.