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Author Topic:  No picks?
Mike Wheeler


From:
Delaware, Ohio, USA
Post  Posted 17 Jan 2018 5:58 pm    
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All this talk about finger picks is useless unless one establishes how many hours playing time is involved.

Playing without picks for an hour, or so, in ones bedroom, or practice room is one thing. One can take a break for as long as needed to allow the fingers to recover.

But playing a 3 or 4 hour gig, 3 or 4 nights in a row, is a whole different world. Callouses only last so long...same as fingernails. Pro 6-string finger pickers get fake nails so they can make it through hours of playing on a daily basis.

So, pedal steelers, use the finger picks, get used to them, and enjoy being able to play for hours on end without pain, or blood-flow.

IMHO...but you know I'm right.
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Chris Templeton


From:
The Green Mountain State
Post  Posted 18 Jan 2018 4:52 am    
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Great points, Mike.
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Tommy Auldridge


From:
Maryland, USA
Post  Posted 18 Jan 2018 6:21 am     Think about it !!
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Just ask yourself, do all the great players use picks, or not. Do you want to be a great player someday? Tommy......
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Dave Mudgett


From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
Post  Posted 18 Jan 2018 6:40 am    
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This comes up a lot, and I don't generally like to say much about it. But I will now. At a certain point, regardless of instrument - guitar, lap/console steel, pedal steel, banjo, mandolin, or whatever - picks/no-picks, and then what picks, are personal but especially stylistic preferences.

And I spent a large chunk of my life choosing to limit myself. First with a flat pick on guitar. I guess it didn't make that much difference for the stuff I was playing at the time. I think that probably a significant majority of guitar players essentially are either dominantly or completely flatpick players.

But gradually I came to realize that there were a bunch of things I couldn't do without adding my fingers. My nails are not great, so I opted for flatpick plus fingerpicks on middle/ring. I gather Jr. Brown uses this approach a lot.

I chugged along like this for a while, and then realized there were some advantages to thinking about a thumb pick and finger picks in some situations. And once I got into bluegrass banjo, that become a necessity - again, this was driven by my decisions about style.

In the meanwhile, I decide to pick up pedal steel. Because of the decision I made to do the thumb pick and finger picks and banjo, this felt like a fairly natural move.

As I said earlier, I have pretty weak nails. Just the way it is. Long skinny fingers with relatively thin nails. Finger picks were a fairly natural choice for me. But there are some things, especially certain things on guitar and slide, that just sound better with fingers. I resisted it at first, but ultimately I just started doing it.

As Mike W. states above, even for someone with strong nails, there are limits to what nails and calluses can take. For guitar, there are some ways to deal with this - lower the string tension by either reducing the string gauges or slacking the tuning. But even with lower string tension, a lot of serious fingerstyle players have to be ultra-obsessive about their fingers and nails, and many use acrylic nails.

Think about a traditional E9 pedal steel and its strings. A high-E typically uses a 14p or 15p string on a 24 or 24.25" scale. Think about what that is relative to 6-string guitar. This is HIGH tension. People talk about trad bluegrass players sticking 14/15-60 strings on their Martins and warping the hell out of their necks, pulling the bridges off, and tearing up their braces. Guitars like this are set up for flatpick, period. And when was the last time you saw a mandolin player not be able to use a flatpick? Another high-tension instrument.

My basic points:

1. One can choose to limit oneself. Personally, I think it was a mistake for me. I would have been far better off to just force learning a bunch of picking techniques, right off the bat 50 years ago when I first started playing guitar.

2. The nature of the instrument and especially string tension does tend to push one approach or another. I think pedal steel and thumb/metal-fingerpicks are made for each other. No problem playing without picks ALSO, but I can't imagine not being able to use picks.

I also hear Bobbe Seymour referenced a lot about this. Yes, he could play without picks, and sometimes did. But seriously - does anybody really think he was limited to this? I can tell you definitively that he played the hell out of a steel, of any kind, with or without picks. I used to hang around his shop whenever in Nashville over quite a period of years. I don't believe that Bobbe would have ever suggested someone NOT learn to use picks, and use them well.
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Fred Treece


From:
California, USA
Post  Posted 18 Jan 2018 7:53 am    
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Thanks Dave, I think you have summed up a lot of players’ life story there, including mine.

I would add just one minor variation on thumb pick and bare fingerstyle guitar. A few of the greatest practitioners of this technique also developed the ability to use the thumb pick like a flat pick - for strumming chords and alternate picking of single notes. That helps to explain why they don’t need fake nails or fingerpicks, which alters the tone and feel of the style.

This has nothing to do with the point of using metal finger picks on steel. I think the point has been made clearly. But, I wonder if anyone has tried acrylic or other types of fake nails on steel?
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Henry Matthews


From:
Texarkana, Ark USA
Post  Posted 19 Jan 2018 11:46 am    
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Picks by all means, get used to them.
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Henry Matthews

D-10 Magnum, 8 &5, dark rose color
D-10 1974 Emmons cut tail, fat back,rosewood, 8&5
Nashville 112 amp, Fishman Loudbox Performer amp, Hilton pedal, Goodrich pedal,BJS bar, Kyser picks, Live steel Strings. No effects, doodads or stomp boxes.
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Paul Arntson


From:
Washington, USA
Post  Posted 20 Jan 2018 1:22 pm    
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What can you do about the metallic sound at the beginning of a note? I can't seem to get away from that using fingerpicks.
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Paul Sutherland

 

From:
Placerville, California
Post  Posted 20 Jan 2018 2:01 pm    
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Pick harder and you won't notice the picks on the strings as much.

Steel on steel is part of the sound. It is called a steel guitar. Don't be ashamed of it.
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Henry Matthews


From:
Texarkana, Ark USA
Post  Posted 20 Jan 2018 9:23 pm    
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It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that zing. That's just part of steel guitar sound, not mellow, fluffy notes.
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Henry Matthews

D-10 Magnum, 8 &5, dark rose color
D-10 1974 Emmons cut tail, fat back,rosewood, 8&5
Nashville 112 amp, Fishman Loudbox Performer amp, Hilton pedal, Goodrich pedal,BJS bar, Kyser picks, Live steel Strings. No effects, doodads or stomp boxes.
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Lane Gray


From:
Topeka, KS
Post  Posted 21 Jan 2018 10:59 am    
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Not true. Many players DON'T pick with an attack that lets you hear the pick striking the strings.
Some banjo players are better than others; you'll NEVER hear the fingerpicks of Sonny Osborne, Ben Eldridge or J. D. Crowe, you'll occasionally hear Earl's, and Vic Jordan has the noisiest right hand ever.
On lap steel, you NEVER heard Jerry Byrd's picks, and you almost always heard Don Helms'.
The picks of the cleanest players usually shows wear on the edges rather than the middle.
The cleanest hands usually have brightly polished picking surfaces on their picks.
I've tried asking both Sonny and Ben how they got such a noise-free hand, but they only said "practice and experimenting with the attack."
I eventually got a (fairly) noiseless right hand, but in the pursuit of clean, I ended up with an intolerably harsh and brittle sound. That took another couple of years of messing with in order to get it mellower but still noiseless. It wasn't until almost thirty years of playing that I became satisfied with my right hand.
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Paul Sutherland

 

From:
Placerville, California
Post  Posted 21 Jan 2018 12:53 pm    
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I know what you're talking about Lane. Most of the time I don't hear pick noise when I play. But I'm really not listening for it, and not bothered by it when I do hear it.

Besides picking harder, the only advice that makes sense to me is, keep playing, and play a lot. Eventually it ceases to even register as an issue. Perhaps it's the use of the volume pedal that masks some of it. But if you tell someone that they are likely to overuse the volume pedal.

So I come back to pick harder, play a lot, and forget about.
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Lane Gray


From:
Topeka, KS
Post  Posted 21 Jan 2018 1:49 pm    
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Banjo with noisy right hand:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r3o0hHAWX7Y
I can't think, off the top of my head, of any steel players with pick noise on record without distortion. Buddy Cage's fuzz solos used to bug me, but shortly after I came to appreciate rough-hewn bluegrass (when I was younger, I thought my dad was mad for digging the Stanley Brothers, but but no longer), I started to see an actual musical quality in it. In fact, I'd say the steel ride in "I Don't Need No Doctor" would be the less for being played cleanly: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uWoi_oBajto
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Fred Treece


From:
California, USA
Post  Posted 21 Jan 2018 8:05 pm    
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Paul Arntson wrote:
What can you do about the metallic sound at the beginning of a note?

As others have implied this falls in the category of developing picking hand technique - the attack on the string and blocking. If a string is vibrating the instant before you pick it, the metallic sound will be more prominent than if the string is dead silent.

Paul and Lane's advice is sage, as usual. I have experimented with every aspect of my attack on the strings since I started playing 14 months ago. Strengthening it, shortening the stroke, allowing as little surface area of the pick to contact the string as is needed for tone and noise, and altering the angle of the picks and how I wear them. It all makes a difference.

I believe the reason some players don't notice that buzzy scraping sound in their playing is because for all intents and purposes it is not there.
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Henry Matthews


From:
Texarkana, Ark USA
Post  Posted 21 Jan 2018 9:53 pm    
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I disagree but what do I know. I’m for sure not always right but no, some songs you don’t hear pick noise but some I want to hear pick attack. Something you cannot get with just fingers. And as far as banjos go, which I don’t play but would love too, I love hearing the attack made by pick like Alan Munday, who is my favorite. I guess this discussion could go on forever but if you want to sound good on steel guitar, practice, practice, practice. If you want to sound better, learn to use picks.
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Henry Matthews

D-10 Magnum, 8 &5, dark rose color
D-10 1974 Emmons cut tail, fat back,rosewood, 8&5
Nashville 112 amp, Fishman Loudbox Performer amp, Hilton pedal, Goodrich pedal,BJS bar, Kyser picks, Live steel Strings. No effects, doodads or stomp boxes.
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Lane Gray


From:
Topeka, KS
Post  Posted 21 Jan 2018 10:18 pm    
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With practice you can get bags of attack without the "skrink" (my word for the sound of the pick scraping the strings).
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More amps than guitars, and not many effects
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Henry Matthews


From:
Texarkana, Ark USA
Post  Posted 21 Jan 2018 11:12 pm    
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That’s a good word Lane that my spell checker won’t let me type, lol.. Scraping is totally different meaning to me than attack pick sound. I like the pick attack sound on certain types songs like some of the Mooney stuff and I guess I did it wrong because I had to practice to learn how to do that. Thats the attack sound I mean.
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Henry Matthews

D-10 Magnum, 8 &5, dark rose color
D-10 1974 Emmons cut tail, fat back,rosewood, 8&5
Nashville 112 amp, Fishman Loudbox Performer amp, Hilton pedal, Goodrich pedal,BJS bar, Kyser picks, Live steel Strings. No effects, doodads or stomp boxes.
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Lane Gray


From:
Topeka, KS
Post  Posted 22 Jan 2018 3:59 am    
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Henry Matthews wrote:
That’s a good word Lane that my spell checker won’t let me type, lol.. Scraping is totally different meaning to me than attack pick sound. I like the pick attack sound on certain types songs like some of the Mooney stuff and I guess I did it wrong because I had to practice to learn how to do that. Thats the attack sound I mean.


Oh, that's different. I tuck my ring finger under and bang the strings off the nail to accentuate the attack when desired.
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More amps than guitars, and not many effects
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Bob Grado

 

From:
Holmdel, New Jersey
Post  Posted 22 Jan 2018 4:31 am    
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Quote:
Playing without picks for an hour, or so, in ones bedroom, or practice room is one thing. One can take a break for as long as needed to allow the fingers to recover.

But playing a 3 or 4 hour gig, 3 or 4 nights in a row, is a whole different world. Callouses only last so long...same as fingernails. Pro 6-string finger pickers get fake nails so they can make it through hours of playing on a daily basis.


As a player who has been working steady in a band (3 to 4 gigs a week) for the last 25 years playing without picks I have to agree with the above statement.
When I play I use the meat of my thumb along with the nails of my middle and index fingers.
If I break a nail I need to file the nail past the break and I'm forced to play with the meat of the finger not the nail. If this happens during our summer schedule when we're busy I have problems.

I currently use picks.. shame on me for waiting so long to do so.
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Roger Rettig


From:
Naples, FL
Post  Posted 22 Jan 2018 5:34 am    
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I play six-string - electric or acoustic - exclusively with no pick of any kind. I stopped using a flat-pick when it dawned on me that I would have 'more fingers' if one wasn't tied up gripping a plectrum. (I sometimes wish I'd persevered with developing a pick-and-fingers technique but I didn't and I am where I am.)

When I took up steel a few years later it immediately became clear that 'no picks' wasn't going to work. As David Mason says, the strings are unusually heavy. It takes some real attack to get the strings 'moving' and, while I can noodle on my steel for a short while without picks, I wouldn't recommend it for the long term.

Having said that, I can play much faster with just my fingers - I wish it was an option! Smile
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Roger Rettig - Emmons D10s, Quilter TT-12, B-bender Teles and old Martins.
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Georg Sørtun


From:
Mandal, Agder, Norway
Post  Posted 22 Jan 2018 11:18 am    
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By the time I started playing PSG I had already played 6-strings with finger and thumb picks for a decade or so, and also dabbled on banjo. Didn't work so well on steel though, as the picking techniques and hand-postures I was taught didn't suit me all that well.
It wasn't until I decided to let my hand "take the shape" it worked best in on steel, and shaped my picks accordingly, that things fell in place both attack- and tone-wise…

http://www.gunlaug.no/msc/smc-101226.html

We are all made a little different, and may as well take advantage of that. Playing steel without picks doesn't work for me. I do however often seek the attack-sound of pick followed by fingertip on the string … sounds somewhat between picks and no-picks, and can be varied to taste for the individual note by a slight change of angle of the hand.
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