I\u2019m fascinated by the fact that the many of the blues guitarists I admire most play without a pick: John Lee Hooker, Albert Collins, Albert King, Hubert Sumlin and others. Before I paid attention to such things, I assumed that one always used a pick to play an electric guitar.<\/p>\n
There are advantages to each approach and the sound is certainly different. I’ve read that Howlin’ Wolf told Hubert Sumlin to stop using a pick and that was how he found his style. I’ve noticed some players (Buddy Guy, for example) switch back and forth during a performance. Guy plays mainly with a pick (and he’s hard to beat for speed), but he has a magician’s touch in concealing it in his hand when he wants to play fingerstyle.<\/p>\n
In December 2009, I started practicing rhythm and bass lines without a pick and then practiced soloing fingerstyle. The exercises and songs in Kenny Sultan’s Introduction to Acoustic Blues<\/em>, which I started working with in January 2010, need to be played fingerstyle.<\/p>\n A pick seems to allow one to play faster, but I enjoy the more intimate physical involvement that fingerstyle playing provides. It feels too early in my development to make a choice (versatility may ultimately be the best choice), so I’ll continue to practice both ways and to explore the pros and cons of the two approaches.<\/p>\n Most players who use a pick, use the traditional teardrop-shaped pick. However, Muddy Waters, for example, used a thumb pick and a pick that fit on the index finger. Magic Slim also uses a thumb pick. My teacher tells me these take some getting used to. I haven’t tried them yet, but would like to experiment with them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m fascinated by the fact that the many of the blues guitarists I admire most play without a pick: John Lee Hooker, Albert Collins, Albert King, Hubert Sumlin and others. Before I paid attention to such things, I assumed that one always used a pick to play an electric guitar. There are advantages to each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,42,12],"tags":[55,62,49,33,23,24,61,180,53],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}