playing it all wrong for 6 years

I just read somewhere that when we pick a couple o notes with the right hand (picking hand for righties)the wrist isn't meant to be doing the work but the thumb and index finger! wtf ??!!!?
I've been playing with my wrist and my wrist is what moves when string skipping and not my index finger which is 'meant' to straigten out and contract to skip strings! Is this cr@p true? then i've been playing it all wrong for years w/o problems.

Pick however feels most comfortable to you, but here's the logic behind picking with the fingers...

A couple of physics truths to start us out: The smaller the load to be moved, the smaller the effort force needed to move the load, and the smaller the distance the load needs to be moved, the smaller the effort force needed to move that load.

Therefore...
(1) When picking from the wrist, you must move the entire hand to move the pick. The hand is more massive than the fingers (duh) so it takes more force to move it, and you're wasting energy since only the pick needs to be moved, not your whole hand. Picking using the fingers uses the smallest amount of motion and conserves energy.
(2) Keep the pick as close to the strings as possible. If you pick a downstroke on the high e string and the pick goes 4 millimeters through the string, you have to move the pick 4 millimeters back to the string, whereas if you moved the pick only 1 millimeter through the string, you'd expend only 25% of the effort as before to get it back to the string (4 times easier).

If you pick by kind of wiggling your fingers, it's hard at first since the muscles aren't used to working that way, but it uses way less energy. Now, by extending your index finger a certain amount you can move the pick up or down a few millimeters, but this won't work for heavy duty string skipping. If I need to quickly skip strings I use the wrist to reposition my fingers, and if I'm just playing a lazy passage or improvising I move my entire forearm up or down to reposition my hand. It's all about economy of motion. I used to play with only my wrist, but I find that playing with the fingers is much less stressful on my hand and I can play a lot longer at high speeds this way. Hope that helped ;)

Don't feel bad man. I've been doing it wrong for 20 years, but it just felt too wierd to me.

I used to have the Van Halen live (in New Haven) vid. As i recall EVH uses a fair bit of wrist movement. There's no right or wrong way, just whatever's comfortable for you. as for myself, i tend to play from the knuckles when flatpicking.

There was a real good article on right hand technique published in Vintage Guitar magazine a couple of months ago. It outlined the 3 styles of technique, the pro's and con's of each method and the various artists who used each.

The 3 techniques would be 1)fingers, 2)wrist, 3)fore arm. Out of the 3 fingers is the hardest to master, wrist the easiest. I'm a true believer of the forearm technique. To make this technique work for you you must learn to keep your arms very relaxed when playing, if you start to tense up you will lose the momentum of the arm.

To rebuttle the ist response who brought in physics while defending the finger technique, this person did not take into account that the fore arm muscle is about 3000x the size of the finger muscle. If the fore arm technique is performed right, you will never have to worry about fatigue.

Originally posted by chris mood
To rebuttle the ist response who brought in physics while defending the finger technique, this person did not take into account that the fore arm muscle is about 3000x the size of the finger muscle. If the fore arm technique is performed right, you will never have to worry about fatigue.

A good point made chris, but I've never grown tired of picking from the wrist over anything else. Even though your muscles are bigger, endurance is the key. So if you've been playing for years with one style your going to have alot more endurance doing it that way, than another way.

I, myself, use all 3 techniques for different purposes. I think you should know how to utilize all 3, I mean why not??? That's like saying I'll learn how to play guitar but I'll never learn chords, or something. But anyways, I use the finger method for single note passages. Like aiwass said you get alot better accuracy, which is what you need when your playing single notes. You don't want to bump another string accidently. Now the wrist method, I use for strumming chord rhythm and stuff along that line. I use the elbow for a strong strum, and alot of the time I use this in combination with the wrist method. Strum the accented beats with the elbow and the wrist for the normal strum. Works out nicely. Of course, you should go along with what is comfortable. But by learning all three you can be alot more versatile in your playing. Picking from the elbow is good for tremolo picking too.

I've never had any accuracy problems using this technique, the only time I find a problem w/it is if I have to do a lot of string skips or a broken arpeggio, then I'll resort to my wrist. As far as endurance its the s@#$, listen to any be-bop player who uses this technique like Jimmy Bruno, Barney Kessel, or Pat Martino....if your going to take a 5 min solo playing straight 16th notes it's the way to go.

Aiwass...if you had the problems you were describing it's because you were tensing up while you were playing. You hands and arms must remain totally relaxed for this technique to work, which is why I guess a lot of heavy metal players don't use this technique.

[Edited by chris mood on 06-13-2003 at 01:54 PM]

Originally posted by chris mood
As far as endurance its the s@#$, listen to any be-bop player who uses this technique like Jimmy Bruno, Barney Kessel, or Pat Martino....if your going to take a 5 min solo playing straight 16th notes it's the way to go.

I played in a Black Metal band once (hehe yes I did believe it or not :o), but we have 5 minutes songs that were fast as heck (<~ :D). Had no trouble whatsoever playing with my wrist. Although you may have alittle more endurance by strumming from the elbow. The way your most comfortable with will provide more endurance then something that you are less comfortable with. Plus I get mentality drained before I get physically drained. :)

Oh yeah does Yngwie play like that too cause almost all his solos are 5 minutes and really fast??? No sarcasm just wondering, Ive only seen him play once or twice and it was awhile back.

For playing w/the fore arm I'm talking about playing single notes, not chords. For strumming chords I always use my wrist, it sounds to forced if you use your arm (like the guy from Metallica).

Don't know about Yngvie (sp?), I watched one of is instructional videos once but I forget what type of technique he used, it was a really bad video, good player, bad teacher.

I use finger or wrist movements for slow stuff but when things go faster I play similarly to Michael Angelo(two or three fingers on the pickguard and elbow). I find it very comfortable. My hand just kind of howers above strings and is as relaxed as it can be. The movement is so small that it is almost invisible. Only problem with this is if you have to string skip a lot(arm tenses up and loses it's howering force).

Dude when they say thumb and index finger, I think they mean finger picking. The best way I think is the wrist, because your wrist is faster and has the movement that goes with the grain. I like to rest my palm on the bridge of a Fender Strat.