Touch, Dynamics, and Accents

All over the internet, whenever someone asks how to sound like some famous artist, you'll read "Tone is in the fingers." It's true. There's more to playing than putting your fingers on the right frets and plucking the right strings. We already covered how to cleanly fret and play notes in Basic Technique. Other technique lessons on legato, bending, and vibrato will help add flair to notes. We also alluded to good right hand technique and the various methods to alter tone and dynamics in picking. Here we will expound upon right hand technique.

This is mainly designed for single note or small chord playing - generally riffing or lead. This is less important for strumming chords, which is more focused on rhythm.

Contents

Recap on Picking Technique

Let's start with a recap on picking. The pick should be pointing towards the face of the guitar. Your picking motion should be parallel to the face of the guitar, moving "through" each string. No "pecking" or "popping", and no picking diagonally through the string, which can lead to sliding the pick on the string, causing a scratchy or noisy sound (see Basic Technique).

For speed, It should be held perpendicular to the face, allowing you to easily alternate between downstrokes and upstrokes without losing speed. your picking motion should come from the wrist or elbow, not the thumb or finger joints. This will help keep a consistent rhythm both on a single string and when picking across strings (see alternate picking).

A Fresh Look at the Mechanics of Picking

I like to break down the mechanics of the pick's interaction with the string as 3 different periods, separated by 2 key events. The periods are approach, displacement, and resonance. The events between them are first contact, and release. Chronologically, that's approach, first contact, displacement, release, and resonance.

Approach

First Contact

Displacement

Release

Resonance

Breaking down the Rules

When you're looking to really highlight a note, it's often preferable to break some of the guidelines previously established. Using the thumb and finger joints to pick can sometimes attain a higher degree of dynamic control. It can also allow easier or quicker angling of the pick as described above.

Rather than picking directly through the string, you may want to pick diagonally through the string, to add some scratching to the pick attack.

Pick Angle Incident to the Face

Above I described rotating the pick, so that it attacks the string at different angles, causing it to have more or less resistance to the pick, thus determining the level of dynamics achievable and subtly altering the tone of the pick attack. But we still wanting to have the tip of the pick pointing directly at the face of the guitar.

When the pick is angled non-perpendicular with respect to the face of the guitar, one of two things happens. Either it will "hook" the string, causing the string to become stuck between the tip of the pick and your fingers as you try to displace it. Normally, this is bad because it makes picking more difficult and can throw off your rhythm. The eventual release may be overwhelmingly strong, causing from fret buzz, as described above. Or there may be no release at all causing you to miss the note altogether. Now, these are certainly concerns for a novice, which is why I recommend a strict perpendicular hold while gaining confidence with the pick. As you develop control, you can actually use this to your advantage. A slight hooking of the string is the only way to gain absurdly strong dynamics to notes. So long as you are aware of the complete mechanics of the picking motion, you can apply a hook to displace the string heavily, before relaxing your pick angle slightly to allow the string to release from the pick and slam into the frets and create a huge accent.

On the other hand, angling the pick the other way will make it difficult to impossible to apply tension to the string without pushing through it and getting an early, weak release. The sound of the pick sliding against the string may be as loud or louder than the sound of the ensuing resonant string. Again, this is bad practice for a novice trying to gain pick control, but another weapon in the arsenal of a master. It is like the reverse of an accent. Your audience can hear that you are trying to playing a note, but barely anything musical is voiced. It is like a dying man trying to utter his last words - the incident noise is there, but what is he trying to say? In the extreme it is painful to listen to (just like a ridiculously strong accent). But done tastefully, it can earn you legendary status.