over the last couple of months i've been honing my fast,
alternate picking technique, mostly because i've been getting into paul gilbert (and a little malmsteen here and there).
i used to pick badly, anchoring 3 fingers of my right hand on the pickguard of the guitar and picking only with movement from the thumb and forefinger. he instructed me that all the movement needs to be from your wrist only; you cannot compare wrist movement speed to finger movement speed. he also instructed me to anchor my pinky around where the volume control would be on a strat (i play an rg so it's no problem). seemed logical at the time and i went home and studies the whole technique. i'm suspicious about everything when it comes to music and i need to find out myself if stuff works.
so after watching players like gilbert, vai, eric johnson and occasionally malmsteen and playing a lot, i realised the "movement from the wrist" was a good idea; all the great pickers do it, no forearm movement. i also have the right pick angle down pat.
but what i was wandering about is the pinky anchoring thing. i'm not talking about PALM anchoring, don't lecture me on that lol. i've been picking apart gilbert's picking style as i believe his to be the most efficient and cleanest of anyone i've heard. from what i see, his wrist does all the work as it should, his pick angle is always good but i can never really see what his pinky is doing.
after a lot of investigation i've come to the conclusion that he rarely, if ever, rests any of his fingers on the pickguard as an anchor and that it looks like when he's picking really fast (eg. the fast sextuplet run at the end of the "verse" in technical difficulties) his picking hand only rests slightly on the bridge and his other fingers don't touch the guitar.
i'm asking all this because i wanna get the most efficiant and effective right hand i can without having to change styles after a few months. i've been trying with pinky anchored and pinky (and other fingers) free, and it makes sense that you'd be able to get more speed without the pinky anchored. the faster and faster you get, the smaller and more intense every movement gets and needs to be more accurate, so i'm wondering if the pinky would hinder that idea.
anyone's opinions on this?
