When Guitar Picks Mysteriously Disappear

You’re recording a guitar solo in your room, and you’re absolutely tearing it up. The neighbors aren’t even calling the cops on you this time because what you’re playing sounds so good. Yep, it’s one of those days where your chops are utterly on point. You slay a blistering pentatonic blues lick, smile to yourself confidently, and set your pick down to stop the recording.

You listen back to your take, and smirk to yourself, “I bet John Petrucci couldn’t even play that.” You’re feeling great. Now it’s time to double the solo to add a bit more girth to the sound. You go to grab your pick off your desk, but it’s not there. You must have dropped it or something. No big deal.

You play your next take with a fresh pick, and it’s spot on. You set the pick down again to stop the recording, because it’s hard to click a mouse and hold a pick at the same time.

“Okay, time to add a harmony, baby,” you pronounce, as if someone in the room can hear you. But wait–your pick is gone again. You start to become a little alarmed, with traces of confused rage starting to swirl around inside you.

You grab a package of picks and take out another one. “Where does my pick keep going? Whatever, I have to get this harmony down!” You’re taking an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach to the situation. You press the record button, and lay down the harmony.

After stopping the recording, you decide another harmony is in order. But your pick is not where you left it. You cry out, “What’s happening!?” The hairs on your neck are starting to stand up, and that prickly feeling is making its way up your back. You don’t feel safe. “That’s ridiculous! Enough is enough!”

You dump your package of picks on the desk. “There’s no way I can lose all of these!” You go to record the harmony, and your head raises to the sky as you skewer the final note of the take. To your shock, you look back down at your desk, only to see an empty bag with no picks in sight.

You’re in a full-blown panic now. You hold your final remaining pick out in front of you. There’s no way you can lose it if you don’t take your eyes off it, right? You feel an eerie presence around you, but your eyes are glued to the pick. Oh no… your eyes are burning. You have to blink!

“No, no, NO…!” You blink. When your eyes open, your pick is gone, and you’re only holding air. You surrender to complete mental breakdown.

Tyler Larson is the founder of the guitar-centric brand Music is Win. His insightful, uncomplicated guitar lessons and gear demonstrations along with entertaining, satirical content about life as a musician receive tens of millions of video views per month across social media. Tyler is also the creator of the extremely popular online guitar learning platform, Guitar Super System. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, Tyler has been teaching guitar for over a decade and operates a production studio in Nashville, TN.