Jump to content

Picking Directions When Reading Music


Recommended Posts

  • Members

Hello Forum,

 

I'm guitarist who has been playing a good while (~18 yrs) and recently decided to learn how to read music notation. I'm working through a book designed for guitarists to learn how to read music.

 

The book suggests picking directions (upstrokes or downstrokes) for particular notes/rhythms. At times, the book's picking suggestions seem counterintuitive, and I feel it would make more sense for me to pick the notes in a different direction than suggested.

 

As I'm new to reading music, I'm not sure if it's important for me to hang in there and try to follow the author's picking direction suggestions, even if they don't make sense to me. I guess my question boils down to this: am I making a mistake if I pick notes according to the way that feels natural and easiest to me, or is there some reason that it's important for me to know and use a specific approach for picking directions when reading music?

 

I hope that made sense. Thanks in advance.

 

-Peter

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

In legitimate methods, fingerings and pickings usually reflect some specific concern. Be it phrasing. inflective, or technical, the indicated execution will shape the results and therefore the musical output. I'd go with a competent instructor.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Maybe it just seems counterintuitive because you weren't shown how to do that from the beginning. Retraining yourself to get over bad habits is always tough.

 

One thing I like doing is strumming all my chords backwards. Use upstrokes for down strokes and vice versa. It can be real tricky at first but after a couple of hours you can switch directions at will and not miss beats. I use it allot recording with two rhythm parts going too. One guitar may only do the down strokes while the other does only the up strokes. Makes for some very interesting stereophonic results.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...