Danny Grady: My thumb is going to take care of the 5th string here. Our index finger is going to take care of the 3rd string. Middle finger is going to take care of the 2nd string and your ring finger is going to take care of the 1st string.
Now, if you've noticed, your hand kind of curve just perfectly, so that each of those fingers can be placed on their assigned strings and stay in a nice row like that. That's what you want to go for and as you pick each string, you want to use more of your finger and not your hand. The temptation is to kind of pull your hand away like that and use your whole hand to pick, but you don't want to do that; you want to just keep your hand in position and use more of your finger strength.
Now, when I was beginning, I had to come over and occasionally, bring my hand over here and hold it in position just so I could feel what it would feel like, just to use your finger and not use your hand. So, let's go through that. Let's pick the 5th string and then with our index finger, we are going to pick the 3rd string; with our middle finger, we are going to pick the 2nd string, and with our ring finger, we are going to pick the 1st string.
And the reason we don't move our hand on a practical side is that we don't want to have to reset up every single time we come back to the fretboard. We want our fingers to stay in the general area of the strings that they are assigned to. If you move your hand out of position, then you have to get setup again and that's less efficient.
So, let's try it again. Thumb on the 5th string, index finger on the 3rd string, middle finger on the 2nd string and then ring finger on the 1st string.
Giles Martin: Hi! This is Giles Martin, here at Abbey Road Studio 2, talking about Blackbird. Blackbird was recorded for 'The White Album' on Tuesday, 11th June, 1968 in this room here.
Danny Grady: So, I will start out with my 3rd finger here on the 6th string, 3rd fret and with my thumb, I am going to pluck the 6th string.
Giles Martin: It's a cool thing to play as when you are playing it, it will -- you forget that it's actually a song, you think it's a guitar playing.
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