IMPROVE: Holding & Using Picks | Dulcimer Guitar (Seagull Merlin, Strumstick)
Tired of missing notes and poor rhythm?
Chances are you need help with your pic. Your right hand will cause as many, if not more, blunders as your left. Counterintuitive perhaps, but there's a tight space with a lot of strings, and a motion you're not used to.
Slowing down and learning proper pic technique will mean you can speed up later, sound more confident (and feel it), and have a new tool in your arsenal of tone options -- pic sizes vs fingers, etc.
DULCIMER GUITAR CHORDS - FREE DOWNLOADS!
Feeling lost on how to play more chords on your stick dulcimer guitar? We've got a lot of free dulcimer guitar chords Cheat Sheets and Song Guides available on the website. Check them out!
And as an added bonus.....
Grab the Free Key Change Guide - which might solve some of your tuning concerns (in a sideways manner).
Transcription:
If you're going to play an instrument, you got to figure out how to do it a
couple of different ways so that you have options. Fingers work, great picks are wonderful, there's all kinds of picks you can use. Flat, thin, pointy, all types and I'll leave it up to you to figure out which one feels best for you. Has the right
sound because they're all going to have a certain amount of plastickiness
for lack of a better word. The actual weight of the plastic can hit the string. How flexible it is makes a difference in the tone, you'll get more of a flappy
sound or the angle at which you hit the string with the pick.
So this is how I hold a pick, I roll my finger in like that, put the pick right there on that first first piece of my finger and then hold it with my thumb down like that.
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Now I do that because I was taught that way, but also because then that was taught that way because then you can move your thumb and the whole of your
finger setup will move leaving the pick point to wiggle back and forth.
When you see that on the string it'll make a little bit more sense so here let's
look at that, I've got it up against the string, I'm going to try and exaggerate a little bit my movement.
But if I were to do this, notice I've got my hand at a kind of a cross angle like this but that's how I always roll with it then when I'm plucking the string with the
pick I can push out with my thumb and pull in with my thumb and then get what is the down and then up motion of a pick when it comes to how I attack the strings down up down up down up. That's exactly what we talk about when we're talking about strumming. A lot of times it's down up down up right so the same thing is true for picking. I want to have a down up down and that way we can never have to move our hand. If we're on one string we never have to move the hand at all just move the thumb and get an economy of motion for things like [Music] right stays pretty straightforward if you're moving across
strings you just hold your hands steady maybe easier said than done and then
you hold like that or you can. So you'd get the same motion holding the pick angle for when you're strung and also when you're picking so if we go
down up down up down up on the low string and then in the middle string so I can go I'm just switching strings but you can see my hand's not moving a ton.
In terms of the actual hand I'm not doing this I'm just doing my thumb and moving the whole hand a bit to get to the strings. [Music] I'm sure that leaves questions for you, I would love it if you could tell me what they are so I can address them.
I'm not entirely sure how to teach some of these things when it's digital like
this so help me out and let me know. All right ,thanks, three quick
requests, one quick suggestion:
One please subscribe to the channel
Two leave a comment
Three click the bell so that you know when videos come out
Now my suggestion is I have a free download it's on the website it will help you transpose, would love for you to download it let me know if it helps
that way you can learn more songs than I
get on the channel. Okay getting dizzy
Bye!