I find that when I’m working on jazz I tend to prefer using my fingers instead of a pick. Is that ok? – Nicholas
It’s totally OK if you prefer using your fingers instead of a pick, and there are plenty of great players throughout jazz history that use a pick, or they use their fingers, or some sort of combination of the two.
I have personal experience working with just about every combination of pick, fingers, or both at some point in my career, and at the end of the day I don’t really think you really have to choose.
You don’t have to decide between using your fingers or using a pick, and stick with that choice forever. It can be more of a process throughout your playing.
What I found personally that there might be a different situation where a pic works better for you or situations where your fingers work better for you, so it’s always good to keep an open mind
Now, I grew up using a pick pretty exclusively because I thought that’s just how you had to do it. My very first teachers just showed me how to use a pick and that’s what I did.
For me, discovering fingerstyle techniques came a little bit later.
I remember dipping my toes into fingerstyle during high school because I had a friend that played classical guitar, and that was interesting to me.
And then I also checked out Gene Bertoncini’s great book “Approaching the Guitar,” which didn’t give any real fingerstyle technique advice, but it showed some of the right hand picking patterns that you could use in applying fingerstyle playing to jazz guitar.
I also did some more serious classical guitar training in college, which gave me a lot to work on with my various fingerstyle techniques.
Around that time I got exposed to more jazz guitar players that used their fingers or alternated between pick and fingers.
I loved listening to players like Joe Pass, Tuck Andress, Tim Miller, and Lenny Breau.
Sid Jacobs is a truly amazing guitarist out of LA, and I was lucky enough to take a lesson with him at one point.
As we were playing together It was incredible to be able to watch how he would change between using a pick and classical fingerstyle patterns. He would just set the pic down on his lap when he decided to play fingerstyle, and pick it back up when he decided to play with a pick.
Now with most players that I knew at the time, there was a definite technique and ability difference between using the pick, and using their fingers. Most of the guys I knew were a little bit slower when they used their fingers because they had just used the pick for so long and that was definitely the case with me as well.
But with Sid Jacobs that was not the case at all; he had the same ability with either the pick or his fingers or the pick… it was amazing.
For him, it was just a difference in tone… a little bit warmer tone from the fingers, a little bit brighter tone from the pick.
And there are other great players known for using some form of fingerstyle patterns rather than a pic, and not necessarily from a classical background.
Wes Montgomery famously used his thumb to do all of his picking, although I have heard that he was learning how to use a guitar pick later in his life. (Although I don’t know of any recordings where he used a pick).
Also Kevin Eubanks is a phenomenal player that uses his fingers, but not in the classical fingerstyle sense. According to his own book, he uses the thumb as a down stroke, and his middle finger as an upstroke, like you would with a pick.
In videos, you can see him using fingers other than the middle finger, but his pattern appears to be: thumb = downstroke, some kind of other finger = upstroke.
So his approach approximates using a pick from a coordination standpoint, but it also gives him the warmth of just using fingers.
Ultimately, I don’t think you really need to choose one thing or the other.
Personally, I use various picking and techniques… depending on what I’m trying to do and what I’m listening to at the time.
I would recommend that you find what is the most comfortable thing for you, and lean into that for a little while. There’s no problem in polishing up something that’s already comfortable and natural for you.
As you go and listen to more guitar players and improve your own skills, there’s no harm in spending a little time to really dive into a different picking technique in your practice – and this is the only way you’re really gonna know what works for you.
After my lesson with Sid Jacobs, for example, I spent a good while trying to play everything I did with classical fingerstyle. And when I was exploring some more traditional jazz guitar trio material, I spent a bunch of time going back to only using the pick to try to get the same feel as players like Barney Kessel.
Early in my college career I also spent a few years working on hybrid picking, although I didn’t know that’s what I was called at the time. I just was trying to blend my finger style practice with my pick. This led to me discovering the way that I prefer to play the guitar, in general.
By spending time exploring some of the different techniques (really exploring… not just trying out for a day, but spending some weeks some months maybe even a year or two), you’re going to end up finding what really works for you.
And it may not be what you initially thought was the best thing, because we always tend to gravitate towards whatever we learned first. That’s automatically going to be what’s the most comfortable thing, and you’re going to at least initially feel the best about your playing when you’re doing that.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the technique that will actually work better for you. So my big advice is this: spend your practice time exploring the different techniques… but one at a time.
And spend a while on each skill before you decide if it’s for you or not. If you need to be in playing shape for a gig or rehearsal, then use what’s the most comfortable and natural for you at that moment, so you can keep your performance level up… but also expand your technical abilities in your practice time.
The most important thing in all of this is that you keep an open mind, keep exploring different techniques as they occur to you, and have fun with it. After all, that’s the whole point in the end.