To Pick Or Not To Pick

I don’t know who invented jeans, but they must have been a guitar player. What else could that tiny pocket be for other than a guitar pick? My jeans all have a plectrum in that little pocket. Always. It goes through the wash, survives, comes back. Hibernating. Waiting for the three or four times a year it gets called upon.

I’m not anti-pick. But fingerpicking is where I live, and this is why.

I was in a mate’s attic, sometime in the mid-eighties, in the middle of what I’d generously describe as an attempt to impress a girl. Someone put a record on. I don’t remember who. I remember the music.

Nick Drake. Five Leaves Left.

There’s double bass on that album. Cello. A string section on some tracks. And yet the first thing I thought when I really listened was: surely there’s more than one guitarist? There isn’t. One bloke, one guitar, and it sounds fuller than it has any right to. Whatever I’d been saying to the girl stopped mattering. I never got the girl, but I got Nick Drake. No regrets.

So, I went home and started trying to work out what he was doing. That’s when I realised you could be a one-man band. The bass, the melody, the rhythm, all under one pair of hands.

The honest truth about fingerpicking is that it looks daunting because it is daunting. Strumming is one thing: up, down, feel the rhythm, off you go. Fingerpicking is more like five or six things at once. Your thumb is handling the bass strings, typically alternating to give you that walking, bouncing bottom end. Your fingers are picking out melody on the treble strings. Your palm might be muting. The body of the guitar becomes a drum if you want it to.

It takes longer to feel natural than strumming does. Stick with it.

There are times the little plectrum earns its keep. Strumming round a fire when six people want to sing and volume matters more than subtlety. Certain styles, anything with real attack, real brightness, where fingers won’t cut it. It comes out, does its job, goes back in. Back to hibernation.

Going nude just means no pick: bare fingers, however they happen to be. For me that means short, trimmed nails and the tips of my fingers doing the work. There’s a whole world of opinion on nail length, nail shape, fingerpicks, the precise angle of attack. I’d rather just play. Find what works for your hands and leave the perfectionism at the door. There might be an article about nail clippers at some point. Watch this space.

It’s not something I can fully explain and I’m not going to try. What I know is that when the picking is going well, bass and melody moving together, the guitar sounding like more than one thing, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

Pick, fingers, or some combination, what’s your approach? Leave a comment. I want to know.