Guitar pick

; and a Jim Dunlop Tortex "shark's fin" pick]] A guitar pick is a plectrum used on stringed instruments such as guitars. One material is generally used on a pick, among these are plastic, rubber, felt, tortoiseshell, wood, metal, glass, and stone. They are often shaped in an acute isosceles triangle with the two equal corners rounded and the third corner rounded to a lesser extent.

Styles

Pick shapes started with guitarists shaping bone, shell, wood, cuttlebone, metal, amber, stone or ivory to get the desired shape. Most of today's guitar pick shapes were created by the company that made the first plastic pick in 1922, D'Andrea Picks. The plastic pick was an idea that Luigi, and his young son Tony, Sr., had after purchasing sheets of tortoise shell-like celluloid from a street vendor. It appeared similar to the real tortoise shell picks used in their Greenwich Village neighborhood.

An early popular shape, the 351, is the rounding off of the top of heart. The rounded triangle is the 346 and the small jazz pick, the 358. All these represent the numbers the Luigi & Tony D'Andrea assigned to each of their new creations at the request of the guitarists they serviced. Soon after, they requested their names be imprinted on them. D'Andrea Picks was the first company to create custom pick imprinting in 1938, allowing customers to order imprinting up to 12 block letters. One of the first to make the player imprint popular was guitarist Nick Lucas in the early 1930s.

Custom guitar picks

Many picks have some form of imprint on them from simple manufacturer logos to completely customized artist picks bearing the imprinted signature or band logo of the musician. Probably the most famous and easily recognizable name on a pick is the logo of Fender Guitars. One of the early "mass distributors" of customized guitar picks was Rick Nielsen of the rock band Cheap Trick. Rick was known to toss out hundreds of customized picks over the course of a single concert. Some of them are produced by The Royal Mint of England and are considered to be rare and precious among collectors. Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top uses a regular Mexican peso, usually filed down to more usual pick shape, resembling 351. Metal pick users include guitarists Frank Zappa, Vivian Campbell, Steve Albini & Vernon Reid, who uses ICE PIX, the leading metal pick manufacturer.

Wood

Each guitar pick made of wood has its own unique properties and signature sound as a result of differences in density, hardness and cellular structure. Most wood picks will produce a warmer tone than plastics or metals. In order to withstand the rigors of picking and strumming only the hardest woods are used for picks, including hardwoods like African Blackwood, Bocote, Cocobolo, Lignum vitae, Rosewood, and Zebrawood.

Glass

Glass picks are commonly used by jazz guitarists. Glass picks are very rare and could cost over $20 each.

Exotic

Agate. These gemstone guitar picks range in thickness from 1mm (very rare) up to 5mm, and cannot be flexed. Stone is a surprisingly versatile material because no mould or press is needed allowing a single pick to be crafted to the desired specifications. Though they take some getting used to, they offer the player a pick that is harder than metal (guitar strings) and can therefore resonate the strings more completely. Stone picks are (usually) polished smooth and some even come with grip features.

* New Tortis is a manufactured from organic materials, and these picks come remarkably close to the sound and feel of the natural tortoise shell plectrums that were made from now-endangered sea tortoise. These plectrums are hard, smooth, and thick, having only slight tip flexibility. With careful use these picks can be sanded and polished for long life.

Shapes

Some picks have small protrusions to make them easier to keep hold if the fingers start to sweat (very common on stage due to the hot lights). Some picks (as illustrated) will have a high-friction coating to help the player hold on to them. The small perforations in the stainless steel pick serve the same function. Many players will often have spare picks attached to a microphone stand or slotted in the guitar's pickguard.

The equilateral pick can be easier for beginners to hold and use since each corner is a playing edge.

The shark's fin pick can be used in two ways - normally employing the blunt end or the small perturbations can be raked across the strings producing a much fuller chord or used to employ a "pick scrape" down the strings producing a very harsh, scratching noise.

The sharp edged pick is used to create an easier motion of picking across the strings.

Bass players who use a pick normally use much heavier picks than guitar players. Some bass players find that coins make excellent picks, though some prefer slightly thinner picks to increase speed and endurance.

Some guitar pick shapes are patented. Usually those patents claim ornamental design.

Innovations

In 1990, Darrell and Mara Kramer of Oregon, doing business as Real Rock, started manufacturing semi-precious gemstone guitar picks from a variety of gem materials including jasper, tiger eye, jade, quartz, and others. Until then Brazilian agate was the only type of stone pick generally available to the public.

In 1996, Dave Storey introduced the patented Dava Multi-Gauge design pick, later trademarked as 'Dava Control'. These picks are made of compound layers of plastic, connected to form a flexible central section of a pick. A guitarist can easily adjust the pick tip's flexibility by applying various pressure to this central section: a hard grip yields hard pick (thicker one) to play lead, a soft grip yields soft pick (thinner one) to play rhythm. , Dava Control offers guitar picks with tips made from nylon, delrin, celluloid and nickel silver.

In 1997 Canadian guitarist Jesse Little designed and patented a handblown borosilicate glass guitar pick that doubles as a guitar slide. In 2009 he successfully uploaded video to youtube in support of his claim for originality and demonstrating innovative techniques derived from his flameworked glass pick. Glass pick designs range from round and natural edges to sharp bevels for every tone from warm to hot.

In 2005, William Von Luhmann patented a method of producing guitar picks from credit cards and identification cards called the Pick Punch.

In 2008, Steve Clayton, founder of Steve Clayton, Inc. was granted a Utility Patent # 7,419,054. The patent was for a CD/DVD tray which contains 8 Delrin guitar picks.

Technique

Picks are usually gripped with two fingers—thumb and index—and are played with pointed end facing the strings. However, it's a matter of personal preference and many notable musicians use different grips. For example, Eddie Van Halen holds the pick between his thumb and middle finger (leaving his first finger free for his tapping technique); James Hetfield, Jeff Hanneman and Steve Morse hold a pick using 3 fingers—thumb, middle and index; Pat Metheny and The Edge also hold their picks with three fingers but play using the rounded side of the plectrum. George Lynch also uses the rounded side of the pick. Stevie Ray Vaughan also played with the rounded edge of the pick, citing the fact that the edge allowed more string attack than the tip. His manic, aggressive picking style would wear through pickguards in short order, and wore a groove in his beloved Fender Stratocaster, Number One, over his years of playing. Jimmy Rogers and Freddie King had a special kind of technique utilizing two picks at once. Noted 80's session guitarist David Persons is known for using old credit cards, cut to the correct size, angle, and thickness and using them without a tip.

The motion of the pick against the string is also a personal choice. George Benson and Dave Mustaine, for example, hold the pick very stiffly between the thumb and index finger, locking the thumb joint and striking with the surface of the pick nearly parallel to the string, for a very positive, articulate, consistent tone. Other guitarists have developed a technique known as circle picking, where the thumb joint is bent on the downstroke, and straightened on the upstroke, causing the tip of the pick to move in a circular pattern. Circle picking can allow greater speed and fluidity. The angle of the pick against the string is also very personal and has a broad range of effects on tone and articulation. Many rock guitarists will use a flourish (called a pick slide or pick scrape) that involves scraping the pick along the length of a round wound string (a round wound string is a string with a coil of round wire wrapped around the outside, used for the heaviest three or four strings on a guitar).

The two chief approaches to fast picking are alternate picking and economy picking. Alternate picking is when the player strictly alternates each stroke between downstrokes and upstrokes, regardless of changing strings. In economy picking, the player will use the most economical stroke on each note. For example, if the first note is on the fifth string, and the next note is on the fourth string, the pick will use a downstroke on the fifth string, and continue in the same direction to execute a downstroke on the fourth string. The economy picking technique sounds as though it would require more conscious thought to execute it but many guitarists learn it intuitively and find it an effort to use alternate picking. Conversely, some guitarists maintain that the down-up "twitch" motion of alternate picking lends itself to momentum, and hence trumps economy picking at high speeds.

New Zealand guitarist Geoffrey Trail is known to alternate between medium and heavy picks for different passages within the same piece of music.

Jazz guitarist Tuck Andress has written a comprehensive article on picking technique.

In popular culture

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Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny features a mystical guitar pick carved from the tooth of Satan, which possesses "supra-natural" qualities (a "whole other level above super-natural").

In the film Wild Zero, Guitar Wolf uses electric picks as a weapon against zombies

Buddy Holly was said to have always hid an extra pick behind his pickguard. During the restoration of his 1958 Fender Stratocaster in 2006, the pick was discovered.

In the twelfth episode of Cartoon Network's Regular Show, the future selves of Mordecai and Rigby give thunder bolt plated guitar picks to Mordecai and Rigby before their performance at the Coffee Shop's "Open Mic Night"

References

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External links

Pick Collecting Quarterly An online periodic magazine for guitar pick collectors.

D'Andrea Picks The History of the Plastic Pick

Borch Picks Custom printing Picks and utilities for guitar players

Guitar Plectrums An brief article discussing the various aspects of guitar plectrums.

The History of the Guitar Pick

Picks - How To Choose The One For You by Britt Burch, an article that compares various pick gauges and materials.

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