How To Hold A Guitar Pick

You don’t have to use a guitar pick, but I recommend you do. :)

Using a guitar pick may be challenging at first, but I guarantee: it’ll help you out in the long run. In this lesson, we’ll learn how to hold a guitar pick properly and which one is the best option for beginners!

Later in your journey, you’ll decide if you prefer using a pick or your fingers to strum the guitar. For now, we’ll make friends with the pick - and make sure you have the best one to learn how to strum the guitar.

The Best Guitar Pick for Beginners

You should start your guitar journey with a very thin pick – as thin as you can find! Thinner picks are flexible and don’t get tangled up in the strings. They’re much more forgiving than the thicker ones. The downside is that thin picks are less accurate when it comes to picking out individual notes. But, as a beginner, don’t worry about that. The thinner, the better.

I recommend the Dunlop Nylon .38 as the best thin pick for beginners. A 12-pack is enough for your beginner journey. Unless your sock monster is playing guitar, in which case he’ll steal them all!

📏 Make sure you start with a standard size pick. For most of my life, I used a smaller pick called Dunlop Jazz III. I don’t recommend them for beginners. - they’re too small and way too stiff.

The Best Pick for Picking Individual Notes

I recommend that you also buy a thicker pick - we’ll need them when learning to play riffs - and that will happen soon! The Dunlop Tortex Orange is my to-go - ideal for picking out individual notes!

🚨 Yes, I know I mention Dunlop a lot, but it’s not an endorsement. They make great picks. :)

How to Properly Hold a Guitar Pick

Yep - there’s a right way of holding a guitar pick too! We’ll learn the most common way to hold the pick, but be aware that many amazing guitarists will do it in other ways. Also, keep in mind that this is a starting point, and you can change it later if you find a good reason to do it.

When learning to hold your guitar pick, keep in mind these three things:

Pay attention to your thumb. You want the pick to come out from the side of your thumb, not the tip.
Place your guitar pick well. A centimeter or so of the pick should be coming out from your finger.
Hold your pick as lightly as you can without it falling out of your fingers. The light grip will help keep your arm relaxed.

🚨 Remember: tension is the biggest strumming enemy.

Follow the two steps below to master your pick position:

Step 1 - Place the pick on finger 1. Its point should follow the direction of your finger - the pick should point out the top of it.

Step 2 - Place your thumb on top so that the pick is coming out of the side of your thumb.

💬 Did you give it a try? Let me know in the Discussion section how it was! :)

We’ll revisit this topic many times in our beginner lessons, and we’ll learn many tricks to sound better with a pick. As an Intermediate player, manipulating a pick will be a recurrent skill to develop so that you can play individual notes fast!

Again - you’ll likely feel that using a guitar pick is challenging, and it might be! But don’t give up - learning it now will be beneficial for many things as you advance in your journey.

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Next: How To Strum Without A Pick

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