picking hand position for fingerstyle

VimFuego

Had a bit of a road to Damascus moment this weekend and so I thought I'd throw this out there to see what others do. For almost as long as I've been playing fingerstyle guitar my picking hand has been pretty much in what you might term a classical position, i.e. hand off from the face of the guitar, fingers at more or less 70 degrees to the strings. I've always played bare fingers, without either finger of thumb picks. Playing that way I find a thumb pick over powers the bass strings too much. The only time I have used a thumb pick is for steady bass stuff, where I rest the palm of my hand on the bridge and damp the bass, but I never liked this for alt bass or arp picking stuff.

Anyways, was having a conversation with someone about Martin Carthy, and realising I hadn't seen him actually playing before, thought I ought to check out some stuff on youtube and I noted that he was playing a lot of alt bass stuff with a thumb pick and damping the bass strings, so I thought I'd give it a try. To my utter amazement, it felt better. It was very awkward at first, as I was completely unused to playing like this, but after a while I noted I had much better control over my right hand and could produce a lot more volume from the treble strings like this. I know this is the method taught by Happy Traum in his easy steps fingerpicking DVD's. So, was wondering what all you other, much more accomplished and competent pickers than me do.

mellowsun

I've never been able to get on with a thumb pick, and I admire people who can!

Depending on what I'm playing, I use classical position or clawhammer style, or a cross between both.

VimFuego

yeah I could never really get on with thumb picks before and as for fingerpicks, that was just a complete failure of laughable proportions. But as an experiment I tried finger picks as well and I found that using them with the hand resting on the bridge made it a lot less clumsy and a lot more accurate (been playing a lot of fingerstyle recently and I had seen my fingernails were wearing thin, and it also means I can cut off my nails and play bass fingerstyle then).  

Phil_aka_Pip

thumb pick / fingerpicks SUCK

meaning I can't get on with them.

thomasross20

Yeah, I always find it awkward but it's just a practice thing.

CHRISB50

My picking hand tends to float, but I sometimes use my little finger as an anchor, depending on what I'm playing.

Thumb picks and finger picks just feel wrong. I'd rather have a freaky long thumb nail on one hand. I don't like long fingernails as it can mess up being able to tap.

VimFuego

I've never been able to use my pinky as an anchor for fingerpicking. I think it's cos it's abnormally short in comparison to my other fingers and it puts my picking hand in an awkward position.