Hey Friend,

Since we’re talking about picks and how they can affect your sound, let’s take a minute and think about different materials.

Picks can be made from almost anything. In fact, if you have something flat and small enough to fit in your fingers, you can use it to play your guitar.

Guitar picks are made from plastic and vinyl, wood, bone, stone and metal. They come in many sizes, shapes and thicknesses. They even have different contours and profiles.

You can actually get a real shark took pick, if you wanted one. Or one just designed like a shark tooth...

So why would you want to try out picks made from different materials?

For the sound they produce!

We musicians are an inventive bunch, so we can take literally anything laying around and turn it into something musical. On guitar, using a vinyl pick to pluck produces a different sound than other materials.

Each material introduces a unique set of characteristics that influence the sound. Softer materials produce lighter, softer sounds. The harder a material gets, the more aggressive the resulting attack sounds.

Here’s one example. Ever listened to "Freebird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd?

During the piano intro, you hear a bird chirping. A coin was used to create that sound on the guitar, along with a slide. You can see it performed in the video above.
 

Obviously, a metal coin is quite a bit harder than a plastic guitar pick, and it has a different profile and physical properties. By being a little inventive and playing around, they were able to use those unique properties to produce a reasonable bird sound to fit the song.

I encourage you to try using unorthodox methods to create guitar sounds. There’s some wild stuff you can find by just experimenting.

Okay, sorry, I gotta run. The j.o.b. beckons… Maybe the boss will show up today… maybe he won’t. We haven’t seen him since the sheriff took him away… a week ago.

Peace~

Dave