Jazz Guitar : Pick versus Fingers

http://www.jazzguitarlessons.net

Are you torn between using fingerstyle or just the pick for jazz guitar? Do you constantly "switch" when comping. ..? (yeah, me too! I use to put the pick in my mouth while comping for saxophone solos!)

Here's what I think :

Pick advantages : faster for single-note, precise, "round" sound, etc

Fingers advantages : simultaneous pluck of many strings, control over volume of the highest note in voicing, easily skip strings, pluck any number of strings without accidentally sounding another one, etc.

It seems like the pick wins for soloing and fingers win for chordal playing contexts... Well, I must admit : I do BOTH all of the time. I've been using an "hybrid" pick-and-fingers technique for many years now and it works like magic.

If you've never tried this, you should really consider it. You may well re-discover your own playing!

http://www.jazzguitarlessons.net

Category:

Music

Tags:

• jazz
• guitar
• chords
• chord
• melody
• pick
• versus
• fingers

[ishouldpractice]

Hi Marc! It's Dave - the georgia guy that's been spamming you! Great videos, been checking a few out. I was just wondering if you'd tried thumbpicks at all? What are your thoughts? I've been working on them after seeing guys like Lenny and Scotty Anderson use them, but they're pretty chunky things, and I find it tricky to get the dynamics right... There really is an art to getting the melody note to stand out from the rest of the chord - its something which I've definitely not worked on enough