I had my first guitar lesson today

[Synth]

And it went horrible. My teacher told me that I could no longer use my wrist while I pick...And that I couldn't rest any part of my picking hand on my guitar...He wanted me to play stiff armed.

When I got home, I read up on about 5 picking lessons, all of them say motion should be from your wrist. And, watched some videos of Malmsteen and Satch and they of course were using their wrists as well.

What do you guys think about this?

[Sixto]

That stiff arm thing is best for rhythm playing, but no good for lead guitar.

[Fishy]

I never really thought about it, so I checked how I do it.

Rhythym and strumming I use my wrist most of the time.

Tremolo picking I use a stiff wrist obviously.

Lead, it changes. For like massive pickfest style leads, I'll use my wrist if it's slow enough, cause I have more control, but if its too fast I'll switch to stiff teachnique, but I don't like doing it.

I think ultimately its what works best for you WITHOUT giving yourself a muscle problem.

[suzumebachi]

And it went horrible. My teacher told me that I could no longer use my wrist while I pick...And that I couldn't rest any part of my picking hand on my guitar...He wanted me to play stiff armed.

When I got home, I read up on about 5 picking lessons, all of them say motion should be from your wrist. And, watched some videos of Malmsteen and Satch and they of course were using their wrists as well.

What do you guys think about this?

You can't rest your hand on the guitar? So palm-muting is out of the question then? What kind of guitar teacher do you have? Clasically trained? "Rock"? If he's classically trained you wouldn't be using a pick anyways...

As far as wrist movement goes, I use my wrist for everything. You can't expect to play a lead without moving your wrist. That's nonsense.

[Synth]

Well, he was teaching me on a classical, and he was "trying" to play rock style stuff with a pick.

And while were on the subject.

I've been trying to play this

Should I be useing trem picking or alternate picking for the intro?

I've been working it on for a few days and I can't seam to get it down

I have the tab if anyone wants it.

[SnappleMan]

I never use my wrist when picking. I primarily learned to play as a lead player, everything I do is to try and conserve as much time and movement as I possibly can so I can more accurately move from string to string and keep up my picking rhythm. I anchor my picking hand either on the bridge or on the strings (depending on what I'm playing), so that I can have a feel for what string is where.

This means that I can't really play traditional rhythm guitar, not well at least. But the payoff is that I can play more complex, metal rhythms and really fast leads feel natural to me (except sweep picking which I can't really do).

[Chavous]

I think lessons for guitar or piano are useless. I use Chopin's philosophy: give the student the basicas and let them form their own style suited to themselves.

I taught myself how to play guitar and piano, and my style, while unorthodox, suits me just fine.

I went in for one guitar lesson. The lady tried to change my style and everything I did, even though with my style I could play more easily than her. I never went for another one.

But that's just my opinion.

[The Vagrance]

I use Chopin's philosophy: give the student the basicas and let them form their own style suited to themselves.

Same here. There is no end all technique that is best for everybody because everybody is different. Try telling you're guitar teacher you're more suited to using your wrist, and remind him who's paying for the lessons. If all else fails, find another guitar teacher, they're crawlin' all over the place.

[Dahlia]

Instrumentalists only need to know three things:

1. Keep your muscles relaxed, tension in any part of your body will kill your playing.

2. Approach your learning experience objectively. If your blender breaks down, do you just keep trying to turn it on until it works? No, you get inside it, find the problem, and fix it. Likewise, when you can't play something, the answer is not "keep practicing". Find out what's stopping you and train that thing individually until it improves, then try again. Maybe you will have to entirely reconsider the way you approach speed picking, for example, but becoming a good player is all about climbing those little hills one by one until your skillset is prepared to face what you're attempting.

3. Try to push yourself with each practice session. Don't just play the same songs over and over once you've learned them, or keep playing the same types of songs. Expand your repetoire (yes, have a repetoire) and try to learn something a little harder each day.

Those three rules make lessons next to useless. Curiosity about any techniques or methods can be sated by reading on the internet and watching tutorial videos. #2 and 3 can be applied to visual arts training as well.

[Patrick Burns]

My two cents on hand anchoring:

One thing you need to take into consideration is how steady your guitar will be when you're playing. The whole reason for placing any part of your hand on the guitar is to give you a point of reference as the guitar shifts around a little on your lap or in your strap. If your're going to be standing up using a strap, then it is difficult doing anything but strumming unless your hand is touching somewhere. On the other hand, if you're sitting down, the guitar shifts around a lot less and since the guitar is touching your body in more places you have a better sense of where the strings are in relation to the pick. If you play in the rock steady position classical guitarists play in (albeit awkward looking for anyone else), then your guitar is going nowhere, and there is no need to have a constant point of reference other than the occasional glance at your right hand.

The guitarist I respect more than any other, Tommy Emmanuel, almost always either has pinky resting on the pick guard or his palm resting on or behind the bridge depending on whether or not he wants some muting. This guy was a rhythym player when he was young, then he was an electric lead man for a while, and these days he plays solo acoustic. He plays it all and plays it all very well. According to him, he always rested his hand somewhere. (In his case, when I say "rest" I mean just that - not like an anchor to the ocean floor but like a broom on the floor.

Resting your hand somewhere is not a win/win situation of course. If you rest your pinky on the pick guard, then your right hand ( your ring finger in particular since it shares some muscle and ligament with the pinky) will have much less mobility. If you rest it behind the bridge, then you will restrict your tone to the more trebley sound.

Check out this video to see how well Mr. Emmanuel has adapted to these two drawbacks: guitar boogie (link)

You can see that, even when he strums, his pinky is sometimes there waiting to catch the face of the guitar. He does have big hands, though. I'm sure that helps the mobility problem.

Edit: Here's a video of the world class gypsy jazz player Joscho Stephan playing.

I'm actually just out of the field of view to the left here - great show. Anyway, this guy doesn't rest anything anywhere, and he is the most accurate player your will ever see in your life I guarantee it. I've never seen him play while standing, though. It must because he can't keep up that accuracy unless he is sitting. He's got pretty tiny hands, btw.

AS FAR AS YOUR INSTRUCTOR GOES - just take a few more lessons. Don't get too emotionally involved with it all, and dump him if you think you can do better A great instructor will do wonders for not only your technique but also your motivation.

[Majin GeoDooD]

I'd like to but in here and say that Tommy Emmanuel is amazing. His acoustic version of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" = WIN.

That is all.

[Patrick Burns]

Here's a pretty comprehensive breakdown of all things picking. It's written by Tuck Andress.

http://www.tuckandpatti.com/pick-finger_tech.html

Remember this is just one man's set of opinions, though.