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Do you have a picking style similar to Ola Englund and George Benson?

9K views 18 replies 15 participants last post by  ChainOfThought 
#1 ·
I do....I remember Paul Gilbert saying in an interview that he had the same picking style as well during his formative years but had the urge to switch to the ''normal'' picking stance so he had to re-learn everything, Then recently, Ola confessed he's starting to practice the ''normal'' method bit by bit... ...I wonder if this odd picking technique have some obvious disadvantages, I'm Perfectly fine with it though....
 
#5 ·
I'm switching between the two, and while I think the proper way is more economic in the sense that you move your arm less , it doesn't sound as good as my weird picking. And since I'm not on a mission to be the fastest guitar player in the world I don't really plan to do a switch to the proper picking. However, why not be able to play both and switch back and forth depending on application.
 
#10 ·
#12 ·
Do both, they both work for different things. I edge pick most of the time but pick slanting can help your alternate picking when doing string changes or turn arounds etc as it get the pick up out of the valley between strings. I saw it years ago and I think I saw Marty Friedman do it way back too, it is also something Eric Johnson used quite a bit, as well as Shawn Lane.
 
#15 ·
I just automatically went with the 'wrong' way for years. I re-learned in about 2006 or so for the greater economy of motion of the 'right' way. I now occasionally use the wrong way again for its different (I think more percussive, chunky) sound.
 
#17 ·
I didn't think I did at all, but I watched my self playing at rehearsal last night and I totally do the backwards ola thing! Whenever I look down I subconsciously correct myself but after watching a video of myself I noticed I was slanting my pick backwards. Now I feel like I need to pick apart my technique :/
 
#18 ·
I picked like this for years, and only just recently relearned everything.

reason being that I was dragging an edge across the string this way which dampens the string attack quite a bit - used to make me think a lot of amps were mushy when it was just my technique.

angling forward feels like shit at first, but I prefer it a lot more now.

for bass I still use the old method - as I'm not a fan of pick attack for that purpose.
 
#19 ·
I read this thread a few weeks ago and thought, 'hm, if it works for all these dudes maybe I should give it a shot' and then proceeded to quickly forget about it. Fast forward a week or so and I notice the guitarist in a band I see regularly is holding his pick backwards from how I hold it. I thought, 'no shit, another bad ass player that dows this backwards pick thing.'

A few discussions with him later and rewathing Olas video....I'm the one doing the backward thing. Damnit. Now I want to try and learn the correct way. I tried just slanting the pick the other way and I absolutely could not play a fucking thing....there's gotta be something I was doing wrong with my hand. This is going to be all I work on for a while I guess.
 
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