What do you guys think about anchoring the picking hand, either with palm on lower strings/bridge (when playing higher strings) or with the fingers, like the pinky, on the guitar? Or do you think it's better to keep it floating?
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Hm yeah I have my palm on the bridge mostly it seems, but I have to have the fingers flared way out in the air or they hit the vol knob. If the knob wasn't where it is I would be able to relax my picking hand much more and have the fingers loosely curled towards my palm. But that just doesn't work as is. I need to remove all the pots on my guitars I guess, but I'm just not good with electricity and soldering.
Find someone who is? Or practice?
Do you have your 3 fingers curled in to a loose fist position or relaxed outward into more of an open position? I usually have my fingers relaxed outward, and that generally means my pinky is going to touch the guitar, but it’s not “anchored” in one position. But I ask because the picking videos I’ve usually seen showed the fingers all curled in, and that just doesn’t feel natural to me. But I’m periodically trying to get better at it, because it forces me to NOT circle pick. (I want to be a strict wrist picker, not circle picker. I converted years ago, and am much faster because of it.)Forcing myself to stop anchoring and play with a floating hand made a huge difference to my playing, definitely the single best thing I’ve done to improve. My alternate & tremelo picking is less precise as a result but my downpicking, string skipping and sweep picking is much better.
With guitar there is no right or wrong technique but in my opinion anchoring is the limiter for a lot of people. You can make the argument that Petrucci anchors and has amazing technique but for players that have poor technique it is often anchoring that is preventing them from improving.
Do you have your 3 fingers curled in to a loose fist position or relaxed outward into more of an open position? I usually have my fingers relaxed outward, and that generally means my pinky is going to touch the guitar, but it’s not “anchored” in one position. But I ask because the picking videos I’ve usually seen showed the fingers all curled in, and that just doesn’t feel natural to me. But I’m periodically trying to get better at it, because it forces me to NOT circle pick. (I want to be a strict wrist picker, not circle picker. I converted years ago, and am much faster because of it.)