Guitar picking styles

 

How you pick the guitar will very much depend on the style of music that you are playing. Some styles of guitar playing use a mixture of picking styles to achieve various tones.

Picking- using a guitar pick to strike the strings for chords, picking and lead playing.

Finger style-  Using your fingers to play each string in various patterns that create flowing lines around chords and melodies.

Finger picks- Plastic or metal picks that attach to each finger instead of using your fingertips. These give the flexibility of finger style playing but give the tone more attack and clarity.

Hybrid picking- Using a guitar pick and fingers in a combination to achieve a finger style tone with the ability to switch to normal picking at any point. Also a lot of modern guitar players use hybrid picking in their lead playing as it give a variety in tone. This picking technique can mostly be seen in country playing.

Flat picking- Used mainly by blue grass guitar players and some country players. This style is using the pointed end of the guitar pick, however mainly only picking using down picks.