You're Probably Holding Your Guitar Pick WRONG.

Download your play-along videos, tabs, guitar pro files, backing tracks, and instructional videos for all these exercises here: www.patreon.com/bernth

"Nasty unprofessional transitions" sounds like a great name for any album I might record.

Okay, I usually don’t comment. But this solved many of my issues. I had nasty transitions but even more than that volume, accuracy, and tone when shifting from picking to chords to tapping etc. just felt awkward and weird when shifting and felt like I was hitting chords to hard and nothing felt smooth. Tried this out in one practice I solved most of that. From string skipping to arpeggios this helped a bunch. Now I know what you mean when the strings should all feel the same! Just got to get used to it. Can’t stress enough how important this is. Thanks Bernth!

Hey man just want to say thank you. Something as simple as moving the pick from near the fingertip to more towards the middle knuckle on my index finger really solved some control issues for me. Thanks again!

Ironically I have been picking like this for years, for this sole reason: I like to play lead guitar, but I also like to do alternate picking RHYTHM guitar, and it's really really difficult to do the upward brush when alternate picking if your pick is flat. So I angled it down, then I realized I was holding it too close to the edge of the pick, so I gave it more space. I found pretty quick that I could go from rhythm to lead without muting or hitting other strings, and most importantly, I could gallop too. My difficulty has been trying to ensure I can bounce from the low strings to high strings and STILL palm mute. When I was a kid I injured my right pinky finger and cut the tendon, I can't close it naturally, so it just kind of sticks out and sometimes gets in the way. I've tried to use it to my advantage by allowing that finger to naturally palm mute for me, but by doing so it changes the rotation of my pick and makes it more difficult. Any thoughts on this??

Thank you!! This is exactly what I needed!!

I've been waiting for this video!

I've been struggling so much with pick slanting because of the way I'm holding the pick. thx a lot for the video!

I realized my pick grip was stupid maybe 5 years ago after watching a Ben Eller video. I noticed an IMMEDIATE change in clarity, accuracy and speed. So many things I had struggled with just suddenly clicked. I picked up my original (bad) technique years prior after looking at a picture of how someone was holding the pick in a book and just thought I needed to practice more. My old guitar teacher never noticed to point it out. It’s crazy how those little micro movements make huge changes. There’s always something new to learn and you can always improve!

The main purpose I watch Bernth seriously is to learn the beautiful concepts behind those. And you deliver amazing facts behind everything you teach... I'll work on it, thank you very much

I'm playing some fast songs from Angra and I'll try this way of holding the pick to get better. Thank you so much.

bro uploads at exactly my practice time

This might help me...thank you, very much. Awesome 🙌🍻

That is the way I hold it and I rarely drop it this way too💯🤘🏻

This latest video kind of arrived at the right time for me. I saw one of your videos mentioning how my hand should have the same angle playing on any string. That's when I became conscious to how bad my picking technique was. I also held my pick backwards and my hand was doing a fanning motion while changing strings. Which meant that although I was able to play some stuff with some proficiency (you can see it with the two 10+ year old videos on my channel, the only two guitar videos I've ever posted), a lot of energy was wasted due to using different muscle groups for each strings in different ways. So attained a plateau that almost had me quit guitar. I've then spent my time learning more on drums, where my improvement is still going. Anyways, I've been experimenting and searching for the best way to pick since your initial video. So again, this new video arrived at the right time. When I'm going crazy because nothing is really working. I'm not in my appartement so I don't have my guitar with me, so it'll have to wait until tomorrow. But since you're the reason I realized the issues with my picking technique in the first place, it's only right I take your next lesson as seriously. Honestly it's like poetry, it rhymes.(IYKYK) Cheers from France! 🍻

Looks hard to tell but he angles the sharp edge of the pick further down (more perpendicular to his thumb if that makes sense) while he’s playing 5:03 , compared to when he shows how to hold it 3:18 , and it makes sense because it feels like he would be scratching his fingers on the strings of it was exactly what he said he does. And this is just my take, I don’t think this works as well with longer fingers.

Hi Bernth, thank you so much for this awesome lesson. I have already seen plenty of your video on how to hold the plectrum and I have advanced because of it. However, with your grip and with my slight modifications, I am still changing my grip to play pinch-harmonics and they constantly vary in pitch and I can’t perform a pinch-harmonic on the low-E string. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for helping me achieve so much on my guitar journey, Have a good day!

At the beginning, I was like wth, you want us to hold the pick this weird way ?? That is a broken advice or what ?? But then I gave it a try, because you have lots of credibility, and you made a video about it, you must have your reasons after all. And indeed, after giving it a try a for one day, I feel faster and more precise than holding the pick at the tip of my index! Thanks!! I thought I had nothing to change about my right hand, I am now almost done transitioning and happy I saw your video :)

A request: could you do a video on avoiding injury? I personally ran into some minor shoulder/wrist RSI type injuries from getting back into the guitar too quickly, and trying to change things too fast, partially by following routines and advice from this channel, combined with some bad posture habits (sitting cross legged while playing apparently strains the left shoulder, who knew o.O), that I subsequently learned increases the risk of guitar related injury. Just feel like it’s a topic that maybe YouTube doesn’t have enough advice on x)

This is great..except that you can't really see the pick grip properly. Need more angles. The way you show it seems slightly different to when you play because of this