Holding a guitar pick is simple. But what’s the best guitar pick for me? This is determined by what kind of guitar you’re playing, as well as your style of playing.

How To Hold A Guitar Pick

Guitar picking differs from finger picking because instead of your fingers, a guitar pick will deliver a sharper more defined style of playing – unless you’ve been playing with your fingers your whole life, beginning guitarists are recommended to use a pick.

The Technical Stuff

Holding a guitar pick: There is a technique that’s found to work well with your specific hand/bone structure (if you want to get technical), and it’s as follows:

Hold your picking hand out in front of you, palm up. Shake your hand in a way to relax your muscles, and return your hand again to the palm up position.

How ever your index finger comes to rest against your thumb, this is the optimal position to hold your pick.

It’s difficult as a beginner not to be tense while playing, but the key with most everything in life is to relax.

Give Your Hand A Rest

Once every couple songs/licks/techniques repeat this procedure. Not only will it give your hand a rest, but it will free up any mild cramps in your hand, and in a sense will refresh your technique giving you a new start.

What Is The Best Kind Of Guitar Pick?

What’s the best guitar pick for me? As you may find on the counter of any and most guitar shops will be a couple containers containing a bunch of different weird looking picks.

Don’t go for what’s popular. Although a standard medium gauge pick is custom, try and experience yourself with a mild range of picks.

Large flat picks are common for acoustic guitar players. This doesn’t mean you can’t experiment if you’re an electric shredder. “I love the feel of a small pick in my fingers,” says Sean ‘Guitar Wizard’ Hayes. Feel free to experiment from anything like banjo thumb picks to bread-bag-tabs (a popular emergency back up).

You can often buy a lot of picks in a lot bundle online, or cheap singles from a friend or guitar store. When it comes to guitar picks, when you find something that works, stick with it.

Video – How To Hold A Pick