To Pick Up . . . or Pick Down!

[dobroman]

Merry Christmas everybody.

I'm duty "put the turkey on person", and waiting to get my hands on my Xmas present (a Fender Strat in the iconic colours) and for the rest of the house to get up, so having done that I'm just idly looking through some of the posts and then viewing some of the YouTube files, and I notice that on some tunes, particularly "Move It", Hank now picks the fills upwards, whearas on some of the early recordings he picked the same fills downwards, and I just wondered the advantages, or is it just choice. I appreciate that if you are playing twin string the sound is different, and if you are playing a particularly fast piece, up or down can make a difference to getting all the notes played.

I am just getting back into playing after a lay-off of some 40+ years and really enjoying myself, and I would be interested to hear views on the subject.

Regards

Brian

[keithmantle]

Hi Brian,I was chatting to Hanks 'easymute' trem maker and he said he plays (HBM) mainly upstrokes and strikes fairly hard. regards Keith

[ecca]

I think it depends what mood you get up in that day !
Ecca

[Shad1]

There are parts of songs where it is essential you pick up rather than down otherwise the dominance of one string over the other is just plain wrong e.g. Shindig. It may have been 'just what Hank did' when they recorded it - fine. But for it to sound right it has to be played that way. Whether he plays it that way now is entirely up to him - but that's how it was recorded.

Malc

[Wilson]

Hi,
I seem to recall that an instructor of mine told me a great many years ago the the up or down stroke depended on which string the next note is to be played. eg if playing on B string & next note is on G string, the note on B string should be played with an up stroke thus placing the plectrum in the correct position for the next note.
If note is on the same string one should alternate betwee up and down strokes. One should practice the up strokes as they often tend to be weaker than the down strokes.
Hope you can make sense of this.
Wilson.

[Martin Page]

Just do it by instinct. Best not to worry about it too much but just play it logically. I've just tested this with Man of Mystery and you need to use a lot of alternate picking to make it flow.

Martin.

[ecca]

What about if you play with thumb and fingers ?

[Stratpicker]

You'll do anything to get out of hiring Plecks from Bakewell!!

[Bluesnote]

I did'nt realise how much I did upstrokes and with so much emphasis til my son asked me why I played that way while watching me play a Shads tune.
I must have just instintively hit them that way for the sound I wanted without thinking about it. So its not preplanned so to speak its just from the heart I'd say. Never does to dwell too much on what you are doing I think, as long as you get the sound you like
Hugh.

[peter roest]

You'll do anything to get out of hiring Plecks from Bakewell!!

Hello Ian,

You have to be careful whith the cartoons. If you say "pick" it's an slang word in dutch meaning the male part on the bottom of the body. Also this is the reason that when you're young, the arm is strong, so you can pick downwards on the guitar. when you're old the arm is weaker and holding down. So you have to pick upwards. So does Hank. To make this complete I tell you how the slang word in Dutch is for the female part. It's "cut". Funny!!

Peter.