"Don't put your pick in your mouth!"

stratman3142

I sometimes hold the pick with a crooked pinkie, which leaves my index and middle fingers completely free. The trouble is that the pick gets stuck if I leave it in my crooked pinkie too long and I have to lift it out with my left hand and place it back in my right hand, which doesn't look so slick.

As an alternative, I generally prefer to hybrid pick, holding the pick while using my middle, ring and pinkie fingers. But I can't play such intricate things as I can when I have my index and middle fingers free. 

english_bob

BillDL said:

Winny_Pooh said:

Ediie Van Halen palmed the pick most of the time 
or are you referring to Alex Van Halen?

No, I was referring to Eddie.  Alex would have been more likely to put a drumstick in his mouth than a guitar pick.  Eddie used to frequently put it into the corner of his mouth when he fingertapped.  That was why, after he had cancer on his tongue and had to have about a third of it removed, he wondered whether it was this habit and frequent contact of a metal pick on his tongue that may have caused the cancer.  He was only posing a theory.  Of course the press jumped onto this and made out as though he was criticising doctors that suggested the excessive alcohol and cigarettes were the most likely contributing factor and blaming the picks.  All he did was wonder about the correlation because the affected side of his tongue was where he put the pick.  Oddly enough that's also the side of his mouth that he usually had a fag hanging out of.

I work in the NHS in a cancer care role (non-medical) so I was interested when I heard this theory. There is apparently a possible link between nickel and some types of cancer (lung, oral, nasal), but it's still unproven and linked more to metalworkers and other professions that have regular exposure to nickel dust than to guitarists who put their picks in their mouths (although that's going to be at least in part because metalworkers who develop cancer are a much bigger demographic than guitarists who use metal picks, and put them in their mouths and go on to develop oral cancers). 

Inasmuch as anything "causes" cancer (that's not really how it works), the cigarettes and booze were probably much worse for Eddie than putting a metal pick in his mouth.

Kittyfrisk

viz said:

I swallowed a plectrum once - I had it between my lips and I breathed in and it just shot straight down like a frisbee and got stuck. My mum rang the doctor and he said “tell him to eat bread - brown bread”. So I did, and it came out a few days later. Now I wear it round my neck, rather than in it. 

You should see a doctor as if you breathed it in then crapped it out, then it sounds like you have an oesophageal/tracheal issue 

Claude_Ruelle

english_bob said:

BillDL said:

Winny_Pooh said:

Ediie Van Halen palmed the pick most of the time 
or are you referring to Alex Van Halen?

No, I was referring to Eddie.  Alex would have been more likely to put a drumstick in his mouth than a guitar pick.  Eddie used to frequently put it into the corner of his mouth when he fingertapped.  That was why, after he had cancer on his tongue and had to have about a third of it removed, he wondered whether it was this habit and frequent contact of a metal pick on his tongue that may have caused the cancer.  He was only posing a theory.  Of course the press jumped onto this and made out as though he was criticising doctors that suggested the excessive alcohol and cigarettes were the most likely contributing factor and blaming the picks.  All he did was wonder about the correlation because the affected side of his tongue was where he put the pick.  Oddly enough that's also the side of his mouth that he usually had a fag hanging out of.

I work in the NHS in a cancer care role (non-medical) so I was interested when I heard this theory. There is apparently a possible link between nickel and some types of cancer (lung, oral, nasal), but it's still unproven and linked more to metalworkers and other professions that have regular exposure to nickel dust than to guitarists who put their picks in their mouths (although that's going to be at least in part because metalworkers who develop cancer are a much bigger demographic than guitarists who use metal picks, and put them in their mouths and go on to develop oral cancers). 

Inasmuch as anything "causes" cancer (that's not really how it works), the cigarettes and booze were probably much worse for Eddie than putting a metal pick in his mouth.

Interesting... 

guitarjack66

viz said:

I swallowed a plectrum once - I had it between my lips and I breathed in and it just shot straight down like a frisbee and got stuck. My mum rang the doctor and he said “tell him to eat bread - brown bread”. So I did, and it came out a few days later. Now I wear it round my neck, rather than in it. 

I always wondered how Plastic Bertrand got his name.

PolarityMan

I use shreddies to pick with so doubles as a quick snack.

guitarjack66

PolarityMan said:

I use shreddies to pick with so doubles as a quick snack.

So this is the actual origin of 'shredding?'