Are Your Picking Fingers Sticking Together? Q&A with Josselin

Question

Hi Ryan,

Thank you for this really nice video. I mostly appreciate the cam on your right hand, the one with the finger picks. It was really instructive to see your fingers moving at the right moment on the right strings.

If I mostly noticed this it’s because I feel like my right hand fingers are not strong enough. When I use my thumb I also move my index toward my thumb.

It’s becoming complicated to play up to speed, (maybe 180 bpm). My thumb and index finger are almost constantly stuck together as if I were holding a plectra (I begun in music playing the guitar, can it be some links)?

Would you have some exercises or indications on how to reinforce the right hand’s muscles, or just on how to avoid the problem?

Thank you for your answer.

Josselin

Answer

Josselin, I truly think we all battle with muscle memory at some point in our playing. It seems like some parts of our hands like to work together and other times they simply refuse.

My middle and ring finger always move together for some reason; therefore, I had to learn to play with only my pinky resting on the head of the banjo. My ring finger just simply would not stay down. It always wanted to pick a string Guess I should have been a four finger picker

I do think that your thumb and index finger moving somewhat together is not too big of a problem when you’re playing rolls; however, they will need to move in opposite directions when performing a pinch of the strings.

There is a picking exercise that I developed called the machine gun exercise. I think this might really help you. The cool thing is that you don’t even need your banjo to do it all you need is your picks and a hard surface.

You just put on your picks and tap on a table top (hard surface) as if you were playing a forward roll. The purpose for this exercise is for you to simply listen to the tapping sound which should sound very similar on all fingers opposed to different tones with strings tuned to different notes.

You listen for a machine gun style rhythm. You want there to be a perfect even consistency between every tap. Start out slow and then speed it up. I would try this each day or off day of practice for a couple of weeks. Experiment with it a bit. I think you’ll find that it really helps. If you need further explanation I could make a video of it for you.

Thanks for the excellent question!

Ryan