Don Wayne Reno playing the banjo with fingerpicks

A fingerpick is a type of

plectrum A plectrum is a small flat tool used for plucking or strumming of a stringed instrument. For hand-held instruments such as guitars and mandolins, the plectrum is often called a pick and is held as a separate tool in the player's hand. In har ...

used most commonly for playing bluegrass style banjo music. Most fingerpicks are composed of metal or plastic (usually Celluloid or Delrin). Unlike flat

guitar pick A guitar pick (American English) is a plectrum used for guitars. Picks are generally made of one uniform material—such as some kind of plastic (nylon, Delrin, celluloid), rubber, felt, tortoiseshell, wood, metal, glass, tagua, or stone. ...

s, which are held between the thumb and finger and used one at a time, fingerpicks clip onto or wrap around the end of the fingers and thumb; thus one hand can pick several strings at once. Generally four are used: one for the thumb, and one each for the ring, middle and index fingers. Fingerpicks worn on the thumb are generally called "thumbpicks". Some players use a plastic thumbpick while using metal fingerpicks. Fingerpicks come in a variety of thicknesses to accommodate different musicians' styles of playing. Thin picks produce a quieter, more delicate sound, while thick picks produce a heavier sound. But as with standard plectrums, thumbpicks come in different styles and employ different materials. Fingerpicks are also used by

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected string ...

, Hawaiian guitar, lap steel,

autoharp An autoharp or chord zither is a string instrument belonging to the zither family. It uses a series of bars individually configured to mute all strings other than those needed for the intended chord. The term ''autoharp'' was once a trademark of ...

pedal steel guitar The pedal steel guitar is a console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all steel guitars, it can ...

and

Dobro Dobro is an American brand of resonator guitars, currently owned by Gibson (guitar company), Gibson and manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic term for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar. ...

players. Fingerpicks generally take quite some time to adapt to, even for people who come from the more common (bare fingers with or without fingernails) fingerstyle techniques. Tone wise, they are the most similar to standard

s, as they offer a more consistent sound. Some players combine a thumb pick and bare fingers/fingernails. Classical guitar players, who traditionally use their fingernails to pluck the guitar's strings, may choose to use fingerpicks as an alternative to maintaining fingernails.

See also