Chicken pickin
A country guitar technique that mixes snapped, popped notes from the bare fingers with a pick and heavy fret-hand muting.
Chicken pickin is the twangy, percussive country style built by combining a pick with the bare middle and ring fingers, so the player can snap a note off the string while the pick keeps going. The sound is short and dry, with the fret hand muting strings so only the popping notes survive. It is played at speed over dominant-seven and pentatonic material and is as much a rhythmic device as a melodic one, which is why it sits so well with a shuffle or train beat.
Example: A country solo full of short, snappy pops between picked notes, more percussive than sustained, is chicken pickin.
See also
Related
- PageHybrid picking
- PageFret-hand muting
- PageFlatpicking
- PageAccent
- PageAction height
- PageAlternate picking
- PageAaron Dessner
- PageAce Frehley