Finger Picks

[tpbiii]

I think some guys in here use finger picks for things OTHER than guitar playing.....please be specific....

 

They do work much better to scratch your nose than fingernails -- particularly if the itch is really serious!

 

Actually, I sound a bit like the original poster. My playing is sort of like a description I once heard of the North Platte river -- a mile wide and an inch deep. I started playing folk music in the 60s, where I used a flatpick to strum and bare fingers to fingerpick -- as well as bare fingers to play a banjo. Then in the 1970s, my wife and i went over to the dark side in the Georgia Mountains -- bluegrass -- and I discovered our mild folk styles were far too mild to be considered to be music. The old joke was that there was a fine line between playing folk music and not playing music at all. I started picking fiddle tunes on the guitar and Scruggs style (3 finger with picks) banjo. When we tried to fingerpick gospel in a bluegrass context, bare fingers could just not cut it -- so I started using fingerpicks for that too.

 

None of this has ever gone away -- we still do it all sometimes.

 

When we started our project on vimeo three years ago to compare the sound of small bodied vintage guitars, what I chose to use was a simple bare finger style version of "nearer by god to thee."

 

We also have some examples of using fingerpicks with a bass -- that what is required when my wife and I play our by ourselves. As a lark, we also played some our old folk materials in the styles of the 60s (and on the guitars of the 60s) -- the old mild us. -- bare fingers.

 

When I play the guitar, I use a heavy thumb pick because of its rhythm role -- I use a medium thumb pick for BG banjo because of its melody role. Here is some fingerpicking in a BG jam -- pretty rare stuff (Angeline the Baker and Washed in the Blood).

 

We never plug in -- well almost never. That makes a huge difference for fingerpicking.

 

Let's pick,

 

-Tom

[j45nick]

 

 

As a lark, we also played some our old folk materials in the styles of the 60s (and on the guitars of the 60s) -- the old mild us. -- bare fingers.

 

 

We never plug in -- well almost never. That makes a huge difference for fingerpicking.

 

Let's pick,

 

-Tom

 

Tom, listening to you guys do the old pre-folkie stuff from the (very early) 60's brought back a LOT of memories. I started out on that same music at the same time, and hadn't thought of most of it in almost 50 years. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

 

PS- Glad I discovered "real" folk music shortly thereafter--not to mention the blues (John Hurt), Dylan, and beyond--and never looked back.

 

Still fun to be reminded of it, however.

[tpbiii]

Tom, listening to you guys do the old pre-folkie stuff from the (very early) 60's brought back a LOT of memories. I started out on that same music at the same time, and hadn't thought of most of it in almost 50 years. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

 

PS- Glad I discovered "real" folk music shortly thereafter--not to mention the blues (John Hurt), Dylan, and beyond--and never looked back.

 

Still fun to be reminded of it, however.

 

Thanks Nick -- sometimes I think we are the last of our tribe[rolleyes].

 

Best,

 

-Tom

[Del Nilppeznaf]

I really enjoy your stuff TOM

 

Quick question for those that use thumb picks

 

I just had mine break on me..completely snap in half around the thumb

 

how common is this?..Its a Dunlop medium..I wouldn't of thought they would break so easy ?.. Been using it two or three weeks

[blindboygrunt]

too much ac/dc in your time as well then ...

 

:D

[tpbiii]

I really enjoy your stuff TOM

 

Quick question for those that use thumb picks

 

I just had mine break on me..completely snap in half around the thumb

 

how common is this?..Its a Dunlop medium..I wouldn't of thought they would break so easy ?.. Been using it two or three weeks

 

Yes, I certainly used to have that problem. I switched to these years ago and no more problems. I think I have broken one in 15 years.

 

Best,

 

-Tom

[milod]

Actually I question the term "pre-folkie" for the 1950s and early '60s when I started pickin'.

 

By '61 the Club 47 Mt. Auburn was going great guns in Cambridge and apparently the scene in NYC was just as good. I'd drop in at the Club 47 on school vacations '61 through '63 when I managed to get outa city life and head home to America's Outback by way of some colleges and cities. I think it was the summer of '62 that the Clancey Bros. and Tommy Makem had a huge turnout for a concert in the Boston Public Gardens.

 

It seems a matter of time and place. Don't we consider the Weavers as a folk group? I figured Pete Seeger was a folkie, ditto Mike and New Lost City Ramblers. Some of that sorta stuff even made it to early television. My stepmom who was only 8 years older than I am but whom I called "mom" for 50 years was from NYC and was quite aware of some of the folkie stuff through the '50s.

 

As for broken thumbpicks, I still have a cupla very worn clear plastic thumbpicks from that era - the few that weren't lost along the way - in the banjo case and 12-string cases. Ditto some long-lived steel fingerpicks. I probably should buy myself an autoharp 'cuz I did some of that with thumb and fingerpicks too.

 

Mostly, though, I flatpick when I'm with folks doing "old time" whatever you wanna call it.

 

m

[j45nick]

Actually I question the term "pre-folkie" for the 1950s and early '60s when I started pickin'.

 

 

Milo, that was probably a poor choice of words on my part.

 

I sort of think of the modern folk boom as beginning with the first Newport Folk Festival in 1959, when both traditional and modern folk music moved from the byways of the American popular music highway to the mainstream, never to look back.

 

Of course, all these threads already existed, but they had rarely been woven togther to form a mind-boggling, coherent tapestry the way they were that year, at least to this 12-year-old boy's ears.

 

Some of the names from that first year line-up included:

 

Pete Seeger

Joan Baez

Bob Gibson

Odetta

Pat Clancy and Tommy Makem (so much for my referral to the "American" folk tradition)

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee

Earl Scruggs

Jean Ritchie

John Jacob Niles

The New Lost City Ramblers

 

etc, etc, etc

 

That's about as diverse a sampling of the contemporary "folk tradition" as you could possibly imagine. Those original Vanguard recordings brought "folk music" (whatever that means to anyone) to an audience that probably never even knew such a genre existed, much less thrived.

 

What ever you want to call it, it was all mind-blowing magic to me.

 

Of course, four years later Dylan was on that same stage with Baez, and we all took yet another turn on that musical highway.

[milod]

Nick, Yupper....

 

You're the same age as my little sis I think... and she was my favorite "folkie" singing partner until she proceeded to get married and move to Texas. Sheesh.

 

I'm not sure "we" sufficiently recognize the influence of the pre Dylanesque non-folkie folkie era.

 

m

[BluesKing777]

Quick question for those that use thumb picks

 

I just had mine break on me..completely snap in half around the thumb

 

how common is this?..Its a Dunlop medium..I wouldn't of thought they would break so easy ?.. Been using it two or three weeks

 

 

 

 

HA Ha!

 

Nicely setup....... I hope you got a warranty with that thumb pick!

 

 

BluesKing777.

[RichG]

Interesting comments all around. Since I started this thread I'd also like to say thanks to those who commented on the "old" folk scene. I started playing while in college in Boston in the mid 60's. There is great book about the era from 1959 on to maybe 68 titled "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" by Eric Von Schmidt and Jim Rooney which cronicles the Cambridge/Boston scene from those days.

 

Rich

[j45nick]

I started playing while in college in Boston in the mid 60's. There is great book about the era from 1959 on to maybe 68 titled "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" by Eric Von Schmidt and Jim Rooney which cronicles the Cambridge/Boston scene from those days.

 

Rich

 

 

And I got serious about playing at that same time, down the road in college in Providence. Von Schmidt's "Baby, Let me Follow You Down" was one of the first songs I learned. It was a quite useful little song.....

[drathbun]

I tried to use finger picks when I first started (early 70's) but they would always explode off my fingers whenever I'd instinctively try to hit a downstroke with the backs of my fingernails. So I have just used my nails ever since. I have a very strong thumb nail and keep it and my index, middle and ring finger nails long.

[QuestionMark]

Great to read folks posting about that era of folk music. I personally learned to finger pick from Pete Seeger's How to Play the 5 String Banjo book...specifically the section on double thumbing. (When I was ten years old.) Then, I took what I learned in a day on the 5 string banjo and began applying it to my guitar playing...definitely listening a lot during those days to the late John Stewart of the Kingston Trio's guitar and banjo finger pickin' on the trio albums he was on. Dave Guard's finger pickin', too, from when he was a trio member. Both Stewart and Guard were highly influenced by Seeger as well as the Weavers.

 

Here's some of my recent guitar finger picking in this video. I'm using a clear pointy Dunlop thumb pick and three Dunlop metal finger picks. I believe you'll hear the Seeger double thumbing and John Stewart/Kingston Trio and folk era influence in my pickin' (On this song, I'm finger pickin' with my picks on a classical guitar...although in the video it shows my 1964 Custom Shop Reissue Gibson J-45 and an unknown named guitar with stickers on it that a street musician handed me to play and then took a photo of me with.)

 

 

 

QM aka Jazzman Jeff

[milod]

RichG

 

Club 47 summer of '62 or Christmas/Easter vacations 61, 62, 63?

 

<grin>

 

Mighta been the same place, same time.

 

All...

 

When you hear actor "Peter Coyote" doing a lotta narrations on such as The History Channel - he's been a pretty darned good picker too, at least when we were in college.

 

m

[RichG]

RichG

 

Club 47 summer of '62 or Christmas/Easter vacations 61, 62, 63?

 

<grin>

 

Mighta been the same place, same time.

 

All...

 

When you hear actor "Peter Coyote" doing a lotta narrations on such as The History Channel - he's been a pretty darned good picker too, at least when we were in college.

 

m

 

Unfortunately, I didn't get to Boston until the fall of 64. I still have a place mat schedule from the Club 47 from June or July of 65.

 

Rich

[milod]

Rich...

 

Ah, the times. <grin>

 

Some 15 years ago I walked again the street behind the Coop and saw little evidence of that grubby little place of smokey light and music. Never again, I think. New England was a different world for me then, except for the music, and it's even a more distant world from me now.

 

m

[RichG]

Rich...

 

Ah, the times. <grin>

 

Some 15 years ago I walked again the street behind the Coop and saw little evidence of that grubby little place of smokey light and music. Never again, I think. New England was a different world for me then, except for the music, and it's even a more distant world from me now.

 

m

I am reminded of the saying "Youth is wasted on the young."

 

We saw Tom Rush recently. Saw Jim Kweskin and Geoff Muldaur about two years ago. Before Jim finished picking the first measure of the first tune, I was back in Cambridge!

 

We were fortunate to be there.

 

Thanks for the memories.

 

Rich

[tpbiii]

I am reminded of the saying "Youth is wasted on the young."

 

We saw Tom Rush recently. Saw Jim Kweskin and Geoff Muldaur about two years ago. Before Jim finished picking the first measure of the first tune, I was back in Cambridge!

 

We were fortunate to be there.

 

Thanks for the memories.

 

Rich

 

I guess we have compared notes on this before. I am also guilty of being there - this was me in maybe 61-63 in a brownstone at Beacon St. and Mass Av. That is a late 50s Gibson LG.

 

 

It ain't over yet. When we pass through Cambridge (twice a year), we often play at the bluegrass jam at the CanTab in Central Square, Cambridge on Tuesday night with our dear friends Tony and Steve Watt. Steve is sort of the grand old man of Boston bluegrass -- played some with the Lilly brothers. The whole family came to Nova Scotia to visit last summer, and helped us do a show. They also brought (23 year old) Laura Orshaw -- my lord what talent. We taped the show (we tape a lot) -- if you are in range of the Cantab, it is a rocking place.

 

Best,

 

-Tom

[milod]

tpb...

 

Did you make it to the Clancey Bros/Makem concert summer of '62?

 

Dad was doing grad school and we lived near Harvard Square those years - and I, a child of the Northern Plains, was off to a boarding school (T. Rush's brother was there at least a while) for a cupla years of the greatest culture shock of my life. Dirt floored saloon in Paraguay was quite comfortable in comparison. <grin> So I was only in Cambridge one summer, '62, and school vacations until I managed to escape back to more comfortable cultural surroundings after HS graduation in '63.

 

I hate to have to do the math to realize it's nearly 50 years ago.

 

Ah, well.

 

m

[tpbiii]

tpb...

 

Did you make it to the Clancey Bros/Makem concert summer of '62?

 

Dad was doing grad school and we lived near Harvard Square those years - and I, a child of the Northern Plains, was off to a boarding school (T. Rush's brother was there at least a while) for a cupla years of the greatest culture shock of my life. Dirt floored saloon in Paraguay was quite comfortable in comparison. <grin> So I was only in Cambridge one summer, '62, and school vacations until I managed to escape back to more comfortable cultural surroundings after HS graduation in '63.

 

I hate to have to do the math to realize it's nearly 50 years ago.

 

Ah, well.

 

m

 

I too was a stranger in a strange land -- greater Appalachia family that had mirgrated to Florida to do construction. I spent most of the 60s in Boston and Cambridge attending the mausoleum on the Charles.

 

I did not see the Clancy Brothers, although I was a big fan. I left Boston each summer in the early 60s to work construction to support college costs.

 

Best,

 

-Tom

[vacamartin]

Always played without picks. Last week I won some thumb picks, and will give them a try. Cannot ever see myself using more than a thumb pick. J.D.