Picking Techniques on a Twelve String Guitar

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m John Armstrong with expertvillage.com. I’m a professional guitar instructor. Today we’ll be discussing the 12 string guitar. The 12 string guitar comes in 2 different forms. The one I have here today is an acoustic 12 string. There is also an electric 12 string guitar, those of which are tuned the same and played virtually the same. This one of course is an acoustic instrument. The other one is an electric instrument, which gets plugged into an amplifier for the sound. Another important tool to play the 12 string guitar is the use of a pick. Typically speaking, the 12 string will be strung and/or picked using a plectrum or a pick. I personally like to use a thin or a medium pick in a standard tear drop shape, but a lot of other guys will use a thin or a thick pick. I think that the medium or the thinner pick slides off of the 12 strings and allows us to evenly get a nice even tone throughout all 12 of the strings of the guitar. The standard tear drop shape is just a little bit more comfortable and I think causes less interference with the other strings as oppose to the triangle shape picks or any of the shapes of picks that I’ve used. "