Video: Learn How To Correctly Hold A Guitar Pick


Want to know how to correctly hold a guitar pick?

Learning how to do this massively improves your guitar playing and helps you to play faster, cleaner and more consistently. However, many guitarists use a very inefficient grip to hold the pick.

Good news is, this is very easy to correct.

Learn how to hold the pick the right way on guitar and start playing up to your greatest potential:

Click on the video to begin watching it.

 


Use the approach in the video to hold the guitar pick correctly and make playing guitar much easier.

What is another fundamental aspect of guitar playing that is critical to get correct?

Answer:

Minimizing tension in your body while you are playing guitar.

Knowing how to do this helps you get rid of sloppy mistakes and make playing guitar fast feel much easier.

So, how do you eliminate excess tension in your body?

Let me help you understand by telling you a short story:

I once had a guitar student who had a particular problem he struggled with.

Although most guitarists have too much tension in their guitar playing, he was actually relaxing far too much.

Remember: Keeping too much tension in your body and staying too relaxed are both issues you want to avoid.

In his case, he was holding his guitar pick too loose, while keeping his hand was so loose. So much so that he couldn’t even keep his wrist lined up with his forearm. This made lead to his open strings ringing out, making his guitar playing sloppy in the process.

But the worst part was: 

His guitar picking was so weak that it was very hard to hear what he was playing.

Fortunately, I helped him fix this very quickly and his guitar playing was totally reborn.

But here is what you need to learn here:


You don't only want to minimize your tension levels – you want to optimize them.

Plus:

Your picking hand often needs tension to articulate and play notes clearly. Picking with a weak attack will not help you do this.

If you do, it becomes hard to keep both hands lined up in sync.

Additionally, sometimes you can fight excess tension with more tension!

How is this done?

Simply tense up your entire body as hard as possible for just a few seconds.

Then relax all the built up tension.

This puts your body in a much more relaxed state.

Do this anytime you're feeling tension and it'll help you relax while playing guitar so you can play like you need to.

Here is yet another way excess tension can affect your guitar playing: 

Pay attention to what happens when you switch from playing from slow speeds to fast speeds.

This is comomn for guitarists even when they are usually good at controlling excess tension. 

Fortunately, this is not hard to fix.

Here is what to do:

Exhale before you begin playing with more speed. 

This does a couple of things for you:

  1. It gets rid of tension you are currently holding in your body
     
  2. It stops your body from becoming tensed up as and after you exhale

After doing this, you play faster, cleaner and more consistently than before. 

Now you understand how to hold the guitar pick correctly and play guitar with the right amount of tension.

It's time to improve your other guitar skills (learning new guitar techniques, developing better aural skills, expanding your music theory understanding and a lot more), so you can finally integrate your skills and become a great overall player.

I can help you achieve this with my Breakthrough Guitar Lessons.

This is how taking lessons works: 

First, you complete a form that tells me everything I need to know about your musical goals, your skills and your previous guitar lesson experience (if any).

This is not a test of any kind, it simply just tells me exactly what I need to know to begin teaching you effectively.

Then I get started working for you.

Once you become a student, I will create a strategy for you based off of your evaluation form, then I put together your first lesson.

As soon as I’m done, you get all your lesson materials sent directly into student account on tomhess.net and I send you an email so you know that it's ready.

This entire process takes a few hours for me to complete for you. (Please be patient with me on this part. I want to make this strategy and lesson plan as specific to your needs as possible. The better your lesson strategy – the more quickly you get better. That’s why this process takes time.)

What do you get in your first guitar lesson?

Exercises, concepts, drills and techniques that help you quickly become a better guitarist to reach your musical goals.

Each lesson helps you get closer to becoming the kind of guitarist you want to be.

Plus, as a guitar student of mine, you also have get access to the following: 

  1. Weekly live video Office Hours.
     
  2. Weekly live video training classes.
     
  3. Live guitar practice training sessions.
     
  4. The ability to ask me questions at any time.
     
  5. The ability to send me recordings of your playing for feedback.

You also get access to the tomhess.net private student forum. There you can get help from my top guitar students – many of whom are also professional guitar teachers.

Then you get to work practicing. You don’t have to practice for hours per day – half an hour per day (3-5 times per week) is generally enough to begin getting results.

All you have to do is complete the steps I lay out for you in your guitar lessons. And keep doing this not just for the first lesson, but in all the lessons that you receive in the future.

Check out the results my guitar students are getting:
 

 

 

 


Want to start getting results like these in your guitar playing too? Click the "Start Now" button below to learn more.