When it comes to shred, few guitarists can match the speed and ferocity with which Yngwie Malmsteen plays – and now the Swedish virtuoso has lifted the lid on one of his biggest secrets to nimble shredding: thick guitar picks.
In a new interview, MusicRadar draws parallels between Bach’s piece, Badinerie – which translates to “quick, light movements” – and the way Malmsteen approaches technique. But he is quick to quash such thoughts.
“That’s funny you should say that,” he says. “All of those things, economic picking, economic fretting, neoclassical this or whatever, all these phrases – all these titles of technique! – people said that after they saw me play. I never thought about those things.
“All I cared about from day one since I started, was what I heard. I didn’t think so much how to do it.”
But there is one caveat – he quickly learned how the right guitar pick could aid his super-fast shredding, while the wrong pick got in the way of his need for speed. That, he says, was a game-changer.
“I realized that if you had a pick that was bending, you couldn’t really play accurately,” he continues. “Your brain orders your hand to make a movement and coordinate it with the left hand but if there’s a bend [in the pick] there’s a slight latency in there. You can’t be super accurate with your left and right hand if you don’t have a totally hard pick. It doesn’t work.”
Thick picks aren't always going to guarantee fast playing, though, and Malmsteen's comments will no doubt clash with the beliefs of Paul Gilbert, who surprised guitarists back in 2021 when he revealed his newfound affinity for ultra-thin 0.50mm picks.
The importance the humble guitar pick plays in a guitarist’s overall sound and ability to nail certain techniques is often overlooked. There have been several attempts to revolutionize our relationship with the unsuspecting string hitters in recent years, including the 3D PickTwist, which has been designed to bolster a player's abilities and never fall out of their hand in the process.
Meanwhile, Fender has launched Offset Guitar Picks, which Guitar World's Michael Astley-Brown found served a host of benefits.
“I felt more emboldened to throw in swept and alternate-picked runs. It genuinely felt like I was playing better than ever,” he declared after some thorough testing.
Meanwhile, some players prefer to go pick-free. Jeff Beck famously never played with one, and Matteo Mancuso has labeled playing with a pick his “weak point”, while Jared James Nichols found finger-picking to be a far more expressive way of playing.
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