You may have played guitar for some years but still think that the guitar music you produce is not perfect. One of the reasons may be you have not practiced enough what you have learnt from the guitar lessons. But holding a guitar pick with wrong method could be the reason too. This little thing is always overlooked by most guitar learners.

In the old days, animals bone and tortoise shell were the main material to make picks. But nowadays most picks are made of plastic. There are many shapes and sizes of picks you can choose. The choice is very personal. You should try different picks to find out the one that suits you the most. If you have no idea, I suggest you trying a medium gauge first. You will learn guitar easier with picks of medium size.

I am going to tell you the right way to hold a pick now. There are just a few steps to follow.

Assuming that you are a right handed guitarist, you should use your right hand to hold the pick. Stretch your right hand palm and let it face the ceiling. Clench the fist softly and use the thumb to press the left side of the index finger. You need not cover the hold index finger. Just touch the first knuckle.

Then take out a guitar pick and put to into the area between your thumb and index finger until there is only a little tip of the pick you can see. Hold the pick with a little bit strength. You should find that you can play with the pick flexibly.

Then it is time to play with the guitar. Use the pick to strum one of the strings up and down. Sometimes your pick will fall down. Do not be sad. Repeat the step above and try again. It is a bit difficult at the beginning but you can do it. If you can strum the strings clearly, you can try strumming a chord now. Again it is easy as long as you practice more.

So how about the middle finger, ring finger and little finger? You can just keep it as a fist. An alternative is that you relax and stretch them. In this case you can use those three fingers to pluck the strings as well. You can also do tapping and adjust the volume with ease.

Some people may have different methods to hold the pick when playing guitar. I do not recommend those methods but I still want to share with you. As I have mentioned, the choice is personal. You may find one of these three other methods more comfortable.

The first one is using the thumb and the middle finger, rather than the index finger to hold the pick. The second one is to insert the pick into thumb and the second knuckle of the index finger. And the last one is to hold the pick with thumb, index finger and middle finger. I have tried all of them but I think these methods decrease the flexibility of playing a pick.

That is all about holding a guitar pick. Spend some time on practicing it. You will find this small change helps you produce better guitar music.

You may also want to learn more guitar techniques now. I suggest you going to Guitar Lessons Guide to get a detailed review of some popular online guitar learning courses.