Holding a Guitar Pick

Methods of holding a guitar pick slightly varies from one musician to another. With some experience you'll establish your own pick position that fits the best to your individual preferences, playing style, etc...

To begin with, place the pick between the thumb and the index finger of your right hand as shown in the picture (for the left-handed guitar the picking hand will be the left hand).

As a starting point hold a pick more or less perpendicularly to the guitar body.

Now bent a pick as in the picture below. And You'll get more aggressive, harsh sounding when playing with a distortion.

But most importantly, it'll reduce the rubbing between the pick and the strings. So the picking will be a lot easier.

There's a variety of different picks with various shapes, thicknesses and sizes. Some will fit you better than others. It's a good idea to get a range of them: hard, medium, soft, big, small... practice with each one for a while,and sooner or later you'll naturally find which plectrum is really yours.

The same thing relates to guitar strings.
Usually, harder pick and thicker strings give more massive sound. Although it can complicate your performance, so you'll need to be more adroit.

Note that I do not mean to change the strings every half an hour to check how it feels, it would be a big headache. You might experiment with new ones just when the time for restringing comes.

If you'll play guitar a lot, I'd recommend to restring once in a 1-2 months. Playing on old strings surely possible but they will spoil the beauty of the sound, and the thinnest strings will add unhealthy metallic vibration.

If you feel that all the strings except the thinnest one are OK, you can replace only this string and postponed full restringing process for some time.

OK, enough talking. Let's get started with the picking.
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