Hybrid picking

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hybrid picking , also called chicken picking , is a playing technique on the electric or acoustic western guitar . In the middle of the twentieth century, the style developed in the United States of America .

It arose from the endeavor to combine the advantages of fingerstyle (greatest flexibility in polyphonic playing) and flat picking (loud, powerful and dynamic playing of chords and melodies ).

With hybrid picking, as with flat picking, an opening pick is held between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand and used to hit melodies and bass notes harder. In contrast to pure flat picking, however, the middle finger , ring finger and occasionally the little finger of the right hand are also used to play the strings . A single thumb pick can be used instead of an opening pick .

Players who use this technique can play fingerstyle with the pick (instead of the thumb) and fingers , but switch to flat-picking immediately when playing chords and melodies quickly and dynamically .

This technique is often used in country music , for example by Albert Lee , Johnny Hiland and Brad Paisley .

Hybrid picking is also used in rock and blues music. Steve Stevens, the guitarist of Billy Idol , for example, used this technique for the intro of the hit Rebel Yell on the album of the same name to give his statement a characteristic sound right at the beginning.

Sources and web links