Chickin' Pickin'

[Coyote]

What is chickin' pickin'? I see folks around here use that term, but I don't know what it means :(

[JJ]

http://michaeldholmes.com/Jeff/Country.mp3

[Coyote]

Perhaps I should have been a little more specific in my question, what I meant to ask was, what is the technique? How do you do it?

[WickedGTR]

Listened to JJ's clip (Very cool btw!) but to be a little more concise, IMO, chicken pickin' is a picking tecnique where there are some short muted notes in advance of a longer unmuted note. Think of a chicken going:

bluk bluk BLLUUUUK!!!

it's easier to hear than describe....I'd listen to the solo on Merle Haggard's "I'm a Lonesome Fugitive" for a prime example of the chicken (and monumental TELE moment!).

Some folks do it with a flat pick but I think the preferred method is hybrid fingers + pick.

'Snapping' the strings, where they are plucked away from the body and 'snap' against the frets, is also referred to as chickin pickin in some circles- maybe it's a regional thing...

[CountryShawn]

I believe the term came from the "looks and action" of the technique, which employs a hybrid picking technique in whic a standard pick may be used in addition to the right fingers.

Basically,when you are doing this, your right hand starts to looks like a chicken foot (think claws!).

Instead of just lightly fingerpicking, it's really clawed and "snapped".

IMHO, it's a fantastic technique that unlocks so many possibilities not available with just flatpicking alone.

Ever since I started hybrid picking, it's almost impossible to ONLY flatpick now. My other picking fingers just tend to go to work without being told now. ;)

Cheers,

Shawn

[WickedGTR]

Maybe it is a reigional term-Might mean something different way out west here...

Was Just checkin out the recent compilation CD Country Pickin' :The Don Rich Anthology (cool record BTW) and he has an instro called "Chickin' Pickin' and it's the stuttering 'cluck cluck' picking not the snapping string style. I have the James Burton instructional tape and he talks about and demonstrates his 'chicken-pickin' style and it's also the cluck-cluck style too.

Maybe it means different thing in different places...

(forgot to add- you can hear a snip of the song on the amazon link above)

[Coyote]

Originally Posted by CountryShawn

I believe the term came from the "looks and action" of the technique, which employs a hybrid picking technique in whic a standard pick may be used in addition to the right fingers.

Basically,when you are doing this, your right hand starts to looks like a chicken foot (think claws!).

Instead of just lightly fingerpicking, it's really clawed and "snapped".

IMHO, it's a fantastic technique that unlocks so many possibilities not available with just flatpicking alone.

Ever since I started hybrid picking, it's almost impossible to ONLY flatpick now. My other picking fingers just tend to go to work without being told now. ;)

Cheers,

Shawn

So what you're saying is that a tab like this'un for instance:

E-----3------------3----------
B--3-----3--------------------
G------------0-2-------------
D------------0-0-------------
A-----3-----------------------
E--3------3------------------

Where you're picking two strings at once with your fingers, is chicken pickin?

[CountryShawn]

Sometimes.

It doesn't necessarily mean they are picked "together". Just as often the notes are sequential.

For example, you might use your pick to pick a note on one string and then pick a note on the adjacent string with your middle finger.

Listen to the first audio clip in my sig.

The first few notes are picked like this:
The ones in bold are picked with the middle finger.
Plain text ones are picked with the pick.


-3p0----0-----------------------
------6-----3p0----0---------------------------
------------------5-----3p0----0---------------
------------------------------5----3p0----0-----
-----------------------------------------5-------
-------------------------------------------------------


Hope that helps.

Shawn

[bagpipe]

Originally Posted by CountryShawn

-3p0----0-----------------------
------6-----3p0----0---------------------------
------------------5-----3p0----0---------------
------------------------------5----3p0----0-----
-----------------------------------------5-------
-------------------------------------------------------
Hope that helps.

Shawn

Shawn thats great, and it leaves me with 2 simple questions:
- how in the heck do you play it so fast ? And please dont say "practise" because I'm sick of that! :(
- what is the rest of it?

So far, I've got something like this:

-3p0----0-----------------------
------6-----3p0----0-------------------------
------------------5-----3p0----0-------------
------------------------------5----3p0----0--
-----------------------------------------5---
---------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------
-----1------------1--------------------------
-------3b4----------3b4----------------------
-0h2---------0h2-----------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------

-3p0----0-----------------------
------6-----3p0----0-------------------------
------------------5-----3p0----0-------------
------------------------------5----3p0----0--
-----------------------------------------5---
---------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------
--------3--2--1------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
--2h3h4--------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------

[CountryShawn]

Close.....

The second and fourth tab in your post actually goes like this...

-------------------------
-------------------------
---------5-----3b-------
-------------------------
---5s7-----5-----------
-------------------------

---------------------------
---------------------------
---------7-----6-----5~--
---------------------------
---7s9-----8-----7-------
----------------------------

And unfortunately, the only way to bring it up to full speed, is yes, you guessed it.... .practice.

As long as you are hybrid picking it properly, there are no shortcuts. Just start slowly and gradually work it up to speed. Don't rush - take it gradually and slowly and you'll get there. Honestly.

Cheers,

Shawn

[gls500]

Originally Posted by CountryShawn

As long as you are hybrid picking it properly, there are no shortcuts.

Make sure you're hybrid picking with both your middle and ring finger. I started out just using my middle, but the only way I got it up to speed was using the ring as well. (up to speed, but not NEARLY as clean as Shawn!)

[wcap]

Originally Posted by CountryShawn

As long as you are hybrid picking it properly, there are no shortcuts. Just start slowly and gradually work it up to speed. Don't rush - take it gradually and slowly and you'll get there. Honestly.
Shawn

I'm not a chicken-picker (though this style seems pretty cool, and I'm thinking of starting to work on learning it), but based on my experience playing banjo, I can say that Shawn is exactly correct on how to get up to full speed. I played Foggy Mountain Breakdown and a few other banjo pieces several times a day (some times many times a day) for at least a year or two when I was first starting out before I got to the point of playing them smoothly at anything like the proper speed.

Do you have any idea what Foggy Mountain Breakdown sounds like played really slow? It doesn't even sound like the same piece of music, but the only way to play it fast and have the notes flow like they should is to start out playing it slow...a lot of times, over and over and over and over.... For that piece I also used to practice the picking patterns on my knee or on a tabletop while doing other things. Now I can play that piece (and lots of others with complicated right hand stuff) without hardly thinking, and that sort of right hand work comes really naturally to me on guitar as well as I have gotten a lot more serious about guitar playing in recent years. Guitar players I know (who I think are fundamentally better players than me) marvel at what I can do so effortlessly with my right hand – at the same time I marvel at what they can do so effortlessly with their left hands! (This hybrid picking thing is another matter for me though... I think I have a steep uphill climb ahead of me with this!)

I think the most important things in mastering a style like this are patience, persistence, and plain old stubbornness – basically, a determination that you are going to get it no matter how long it takes you, and the patience and persistence to keep at it until it all starts to really click. You have to be able to gain pleasure and personal satisfaction from small incremental improvements in your playing. With persistence though, it will all start to click and become second nature.

Some of my fingerstyle guitar pieces have required this same sort of persistence to an extreme. I spent at least a year tying to master a complicated Bach piece. I must have played parts of it more than a thousand times (I'm not exaggerating) before really getting to the point of playing the peice fluidly and reliably. To be honest, I still don't have the piece down perfectly, but I've gone on and worked on a variety of other peices, going back to the Bach peice regularly, and all the pieces are in fact slowly getting better. Each piece has its own challenges, and as I gradually master these individual challenges a synergy starts to happen and my playing of all of the pieces improves. This is how it was when learning banjo, and this is how it has been in recent years as I have moved more into guitar.

[Chris S.]

Along the same lines as what wcap is saying, here's an old thread that might help:

http://tdpri.com/viewtopic.php?t=6388

Best of luck, CS

[wcap]

One more comment:

A lot of the pieces I have tackled have had parts (sometimes large parts) that at first seemed literally impossible to play. Sometimes the impossibility has had to do with the difficulty of memorizing a piece (for me, for better or worse, I find I can't play a piece really well unless I have it memorized...I'm not a professional player, just a really obsessed amateur – I play a lot, but basically just for my own enjoyment). Sometimes it is mastering a picking pattern that is so hard. Sometimes (often) it is that some of the left-hand work seems literally impossible to play (big stretches, having to be in too many places on the neck at virtually the same time, etc). I mean, some of these things have seemed really, truly, literally impossible.

With practice and persistence though, a lot of what seems at first to be imposssible becomes very possible...comfortable and familiar even.

The only thing that keeps me going with some of the new pieces that I work on sometimes is the knowledge that I have tackled other challenges in the past that seemed equally impossible at first, and with persistence I mastered those seeming impossibilities.

So again, in my experience anyway, the thing to do is to be persistent (stubborn even), patient, and don't give up. And enjoy the ride as you do so. Ultimately a really big thrill is the mastery of a piece or a playing style, but a lot of the fun is also in the process of getting there.

And given the virtually endless possibilities with guitars, there will always be some new mountain to climb to keep it all fresh and new and challenging. I get overwhelmed sometimes when I contemplate how little I really know about guitar playing (despite the fact that people are often really impressed by some of my playing), and I get frustrated by how limited I tend to be stylistically, but on the other hand, I know that as long as my hands and mind and ears hold out I will never have reason to be bored.

[the velvet catfish]

Muscle Memory...

There are NO shortcuts.