A marriage of fingerpicking and flatpicking, hybrid picking offers elements of
both techniques, but replaces neither. Photo 1 shows the basic hybrid picking
hand position, which involves attacking the strings using a flatpick plus middle
and ring fingers. Here, my pick is hitting the 5th string, and my middle and ring
fingers are plucking the 3rd and 2nd strings.
With a classical or jazz fingerstyle technique, your wrist is arched, your hand
is open, and your picking fingers are relaxed and extended. With hybrid picking,
however, your wrist is flat, your hand rides low, and your middle and ring fingers
are tightly curled as they engage the strings. It’s the flatpick that determines this
close-in hand position. Curled like this, your picking fingers pull up
Hybrid Picking 101
Photo 1
on the strings, rather than stroking across them (as they would in more traditional fingerpicking). This pulling creates a snappy, popping tone that’s at the heart
of country, rockabilly, and other twangy styles.
For a percussive effect, use the back edge of your picking hand to mute the
bass strings as you flatpick them (Photo 2). Palm-muting also helps you prevent
unwanted open strings from ringing out as you dig into the notes you’re aiming
for. When muting, rest your hand lightly on the bridge, so you’ll be able to scoot
quickly and easily along the saddles as your lines move from bass to treble
strings and back again. Two more benefits: A light touch is better for your tendons and allows your guitar to resonate more freely for maximum sustain.
Photo 2
to fret this new chord, we’ve had
to refinger the voicing. In this
instance, the root migrates from
the 4th to the 3rd string. Though
the root has moved, its pitch
hasn’t changed.
Incidentally, when a chord’s
lowest note is not the root, the
harmony is typically written as a
slash chord with the chord name
on the left and the special bass
note on the right. Most slash
chords have the 3rd (or %3rd) in
the bass, but the 5th and other
chord tones can show up here
too. (You can even have non-chord tones in the bass, but that’s
a topic for another column.)
Now, repeat the process for
the second pair of chords in this
example, Am and Am/C. Here,
we’re pulling the %3rd (C) from
inside Am and dropping it down
an octave. As you play both
chords, listen carefully and com-
pare their relative sonic “weight.”
With its expanded range, Am/C
sounds bigger than its more com-
pact sibling, although without
the root as the lowest note, it can
also sound more ambiguous. It’s
good to keep these qualities in
mind when arranging music with
slash chords.
Pushing on, we tackle E and
Em, pulling out G# and G (the
3rd and %3rd, respectively) and
dropping them an octave to cre-
ate E/G# and Em/G voicings.
Fig. 2 gives us an alternative
visual perspective on the four
new voicings we’ve created. We
can clearly see that the only dif-
ference between A/C# and Am/C,
or E/G# and Em/G is the half-
step shift that results from mov-
ing the 3rd to the %3rd. Perhaps
you’ve played these chords
“It’s easy to generate
“hybrid-friendly”
chords, once you
know the process.”
before. If not, take a minute to
chase them up and down the
fretboard, and then hop back and
forth between the grips on string
sets 5–3– 2 and 6–4– 3.
Now, let’s put our chords to
work. Fig. 3 contains strummed
four- and five-note chords (A2,
D2, and the Aadd2 at the end),
as well as plucked three-note
voicings. Pay attention to the
picking-hand markings for A/C#,
D/F#, and G2. In bar 3, we get
a piano-like effect by simultaneously plucking the notes in G2
and D/F#. It’s a sound you can’t
get using a flatpick alone. As you
play through this example, notice
the variety of picking-hand textures: full strums, arpeggios, and
piano stabs. Also, in bars 1 and
2, notice how the lowest note in
each slash chord lies a half-step
below the root of the subsequent
chord and how strongly one leads
to the other.
voiced on strings 6, 4, and 3.
To accentuate the root in any of
these chords, simply yank the 4th
string a little harder—that will
do the trick. Try this progression with some slow flanging or
modulated delay.
In this lesson, we’ve created
new voicings by dropping the
middle note of a root-3rd-5th
triad down an octave. Next
month, we’ll see what happens
when we push the middle note
up an octave. Meanwhile, use
these chords to create some progressions of your own.
Fig. 4 consists entirely of
hybrid-friendly slash chords
PREMIER GUITAR JANUARY 2011 85
ANDY ELLIS is a vet- eran guitar journalist and Senior Editor at PG. Based in Nashville, Andy backs singer-songwriters on the baritone guitar, and also hosts The
Guitar Show, a weekly on-air and online
broadcast. For the schedule, links to the
stations’ streams, archived audio interviews with inspiring players, and more,
visit theguitarshow.com.
