Picking
- Rhythm playing requires you to have control and coordination between your right and left hand. That said, most of the time, the picking hand does most of the difficult work for rhythm playing. This lesson is all about picking patterns and different things you can do to make your picking better.
- The most important tip I can give you is that speed is always less important than accuracy and cleanliness. Fast, sloppy picking sounds terrible, and you will probably go off beat.
- You should use a thick pick for power and control. A thin pick will not give you any control. We are playing metal, so you need to have as much precision and control as possible. Thick picks can be used just the same for strumming and such. I use Jim Dunlop Glow Standard picks, at 1.14mm. They are great picks because they are made out of nylon, so they don’t bend or break, they have a grip, and they glow in the dark.
Experiment with how you hold the pick. The most intuitive is to just use the tip of your index and thumb, but I prefer to curl my index and hold it on the side of my index finger. It gives you a lot more control. There are other ways of holding the pick as well. The main thing is to just do what is comfortable and natural for you.- Your picking style can be from the elbow and wrist for a lot of power, like Jeff Hanneman from Slayer, or you can use your finger joints for more precision. You should be comfortable with all three though.
- Normally, I don’t worry about which direction (up or down) I hit the strings for leads. I just do what is natural. However, for rhythm, it is very important. You should downpick most heavy palm muted parts. A common example is the verse riff to Metallica – Master Of Puppets. In particular, the open strings. Don’t be afraid of being hard and aggressive. The reason is that we are playing metal, and your playing should reflect that. Strings are replaceable.
- When you do want to uppick, experiment with the angle of your pick. I find that a 45 degree angle usually works best for me, but you can get a lot of control by “hooking” your pick around the string at a perpendicular angle. Changing your pick angle can also give you a nice “squeaking” metal sound that sounds great for both rhythm and lead.
- A critically important technique to learn is to to be able to switch rapidly between palm muted and not palm muted picking. There are a lot of thrash metal songs that do this. A few good songs that use this are Metallica – Blackened and Fear Factory – Demanufacture.
- Finally, know when to back off a little on the hard picking. In particular, for the complicated riffs that require a lot of precise picking.
- A subtle but often overlooked aspect of rhythm playing is knowing when to play certain notes with or without palm muting. For example, in the verse riff to Megadeth – Peace Sells, the first note is palm muted. It might be tempting to play the first note without palm muting, especially when playing the riff many times over and over. Compare this to the verse riff of Megadeth – Lucretia, where it is necessary to play the first note without palm muting.
Hey man, I was just wondering, when you are downpicking how do you hold the pick relative to the string? Parallel or at an angle?
@Alex
I usually hold the pick at an angle. Looking down on the pick, it is about at a 135 degree angle. So that means (because I’m a right handed guitarist) the pick points towards the left a bit, down towards the ground.
Thanks dude, I appreciate it!
Your lessons are great, and I can tell that my playing has improved drastically since I’ve been reading and watching your videos.
@Alex
Right on! Glad to hear that they actually helped. They were painful to make, heheh.