Stop 4 of 6
Hybrid picking
Pick and fingers together: string skips and country.
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Stop 4 of 6
Pick and fingers together: string skips and country.
What if you didn't have to choose between pick and fingers? combines both: the pick, held between thumb and index, keeps playing as usual, and the middle and ring fingers, which have been on holiday until now, pluck the treble strings as in . It is the sound of electric country, of many rock and fusion players, and an elegant answer to string skips that are awkward with the pick alone.
An accompaniment arpeggio on C, Am and G. The pick plays the bass and the 4th string; the middle finger the 3rd; the ring finger the 2nd. Hear how the treble notes sound rounder and a touch more "plucked" than the picked ones:
With the pick alone, this pattern forces the pick to jump from the 5th to the 3rd string, come back to the 4th and jump to the 2nd: a lot of travel. With hybrid picking each "worker" has its own string and barely moves.
String skipping means playing two non-adjacent strings in a row. It is a lovely device for open-sounding arpeggios with wide intervals, but with the pick alone it demands a precise motion over the string in between. With hybrid picking the pick plays the lower string and a finger the higher one: nobody skips.
In this example the pick plays strings 4 and 3; the middle finger string 2; the ring finger string 1. The string order is 4-2-3-1: skip, back, skip.
Notice how the chords connect: from Am to F only one note changes (the 2nd-string note rises a semitone, from E to F), and from C to G the notes move as little as possible. The fretting hand hardly travels.
is the clucking sound of electric country. It comes from combining two things:
Listen to this original phrase over A7. The x marks on the 3rd string are the picked dead notes; the 2nd-string notes are the middle-finger snaps:
The phrase's notes, E, F♯, G, C♯, B and A, come from A , the natural colour over A7.
With two free fingers you can pluck : middle finger on the 3rd string and ring finger on the 2nd, together, with the same snap. Meanwhile the pick can rest or play a bass note. This example climbs in A Mixolydian thirds on strings 3 and 2:
Hybrid picking isn't only for country. In rock and pop it is often used to hold a low pedal note with the pick while the fingers play a melody on top, as if there were two guitars. In this example the pick repeats the open 5th-string A on every beat, and the middle finger plays a melody on the 2nd string, always on the offbeat:
Two details make the difference. First, balance: the bass tends to come out loud and the melody weak, when it should be the other way round; soften the pick and give the finger a bit more energy. Second, muting: the fingers that aren't playing (ring and little) can rest lightly on the 1st string so it doesn't ring in sympathy, and the edge of the hand can brush the 6th string. In hybrid picking, as in legato, every part of the hand has two jobs: playing and keeping quiet.
Play the first example of this stop with the split pick, middle, pick, ring. Keep the pick moving down on the bass strings. When it's clean, try accenting the finger notes, then the picked ones.
Goal: Play four cycles of C, Am, G and C without the pick shifting or slipping.
Play the string-skipping example over the backing. First in eighths at 60 BPM; when it's comfortable, double up: play the same pattern in sixteenths at half the tempo. If the picked note is louder than the finger notes, soften the pick.
Goal: Four cycles of Am, F, C, G with all four notes of each group at the same volume.
Play the phrase over the A7 backing. Exaggerate the contrast: a very short, dry "tick" on the dead note and a bright snap from the middle finger. Then end each pass with the plucked thirds.
Goal: Play the A Mixolydian phrase with clearly percussive dead notes and bright snaps, four times in a row.
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