How to Perform Pick Scratching

There are a lot of guitar techniques that belong to the hard-rock electric guitarist. The options for sound increase when a guitar (or other string instrument) is amplified and distorted. Musicians can work on creating less melodic and more ambient sounds to augment straightforward playing. Pick scratching is one of these techniques that produces a "metal" sound.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. Turn up your gain/distortion. Get your amp to where anything you play on the guitar's fretboard is amped up and "crunchy". This is essential to making pick scratching sound good.

2. Mute the strings by putting your picking hand near the bridge.

3. Play a few notes or chords, adding just the right amount of tension with your picking hand, so that the sound rings out but is quickly silenced.

4. Try playing with the side of your pick. For pick scratching, instead of plucking the strings, you're attacking them with the blunt side of the pick, making a scratchy sound (hence the name of the technique.)

5. Add additional pick scratching sound by running the pick down the strings as you hit them. This will give you the same sharp, crunchy sound but with a sliding melodic tone.

Tips & Warnings

• If you're confused about pick scratching, Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine has a few words for you. Mustaine appears on YouTube to tell beginning guitarists how pick scratching works and provides some examples from his own repertoire.

Resources

• Dave Mustaine on YouTube