From the course: Banjo Lessons: 2 Hammer-Ons and Pull-Offs

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Hitting the head with the picks

Hitting the head with the picks

- Alright, now that we're up and running with some playing, playing some rolls, picking a little bit, one of the things you may find yourself doing is hitting the head with the picks. This is a not uncommon problem, in fact, you may not be aware that you're doing that, but tune into your playing and make sure you're not doing that, and if you are, what I used to tell my students originally, many years ago, was like when you go to the doctor and say "doctor, every time I do this, it hurts." The doctor says, "Don't do that." That's a Henny Youngman joke. Anyway, and people would have varying degrees of success with that, and then I gave a workshop up in Toronto, Canada and a wonderful banjo player and wonderful human being, a guy named Ian Perry, who writes for Banjo Newsletter, which you should all subscribe to, told me what his technique was, and what he said was, when you're picking, just start picking so you're not, you're sort of air picking, you're not quite hitting the strings…

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