I’ve been looking at all of Justin’s intro strumming videos again and thinking about how I hold the pick and strum. I am using the recommended method for holding the pick now. In the first picture i show the pick starting position, in the second picture I close the thumb on the pick and in the third picture I curl the fingers in just enough to so as not to hit the string when I strum.
I tried Justin’s suggestion of pressing in the thumb and creating an angle in the pick, but this seems to make my hand overly tense. I notice that my wrist seems to turn back and forth or rotate slightly when I bend the elbow to strum up and down. It seem like a natural relaxed motion to me, like rotating the wrists as in a golf swing. I have exaggerated the rotation in these two pictures but noticed that when my wrist turns slightly so that pick is turn slightly towards my face, the pick will naturally hit the first string at an angle on the down strum. At the bottom of the strum the wrist and pick is rotated down as in the second picture and on the upswing will hit the string at the appropriate angle so as not to catch on the strings:
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I’m just pulled these off of my iphone unmodified. So I apologize if the pictures are too big.