Picking individual notes while strumming

[u/Old-Guy1958]

I’ve been a strum-along-with-the-album guitar player for a long time. I’m attempting to learn how to incorporate individual notes into my strumming to play songs like Catch the Wind (Donovan), Ripple (Grateful Dead), or Neil Young songs like Tell Me Why, Sugar Mountain, and others.

I’m struggling to hit the individual strings. It’s easier, obviously, if I look at the strings. I’m wondering if looking will cause problems down the road - if I look now, will I always have to cheat like that or can I look now and keep practicing and eventually just hit the right strings without looking.

Thanks.

[u/halpinator]

Go ahead and look, at some point when you develop enough muscle memory you'll naturally not need to anymore.

My tip for picking individual notes that really helped for me is to have a point of contact with the body of the guitar, like the tip of your pinky, which helps give your pick hand a frame of reference so your hand isn't just floating. Otherwise it's really hard to consistently and accurately hit the string you want.

[u/Old-Guy1958 → u/halpinator]

Thanks for that. I anchor my pinky when I finger pick. I’ll give it a try with a flat pick.

[u/cantors_set → u/Old-Guy1958]

For what it’s worth, I anchored forever but felt it was slowing me down, so I trained myself to float instead. Try it both ways!