TeChnique FoCus

Many country guitar players use hybrid picking (pick and fingers together) or a thumb pick. The thumb pick is a plectrum style device that clips firmly onto the thumb of the picking hand and requires no extra fingers to hold it. One of the advantages of using a thumb pick is that you can maintain a full fingerstyle technique. The thumb can freely play the bass notes, and the first, second and third fingers (referred to as i, m, a) can play the melody. The thumb pick helps with the bass note definition and sounds great when used in conjunction with slap-back delay and a palm mute. The thumb pick can also double as a plectrum to pick single-note lines and chords with both down and up strokes. With the thumb pick on simply pinch your first finger against your thumb as you would if you were holding a plectrum. Hybrid picking is like having your cake and eating it. You get the definition and attack of the pick in conjunction with the dexterity and tone of the fingers. Much of the tone comes from plucking hard with the fingers so the strings snap back onto the frets. If you combine this with a bright bridge pickup tone, the results can be very effective. This month’s track was performed using a thumb pick just as Chet did and it is easy to hear that the tone produced is more ‘Chet’. This tune also can be performed with the hybrid picking technique, which combines the use of a normal pick with the picking hand’s second and third fingers. With the hybrid picking technique you lose some of the freedom associated with using the thumb pick; plus of course you need the first finger to hold the pick, so that is out of commission also. But you can get great results with hybrid picking and this technique has the advantage of bolting on to your existing plectrum style.