Whacking Day - In Which I Pick On Snakes...

 For such a staple, workhorse instrument, there's something unusually fragile about a guitar.

 Keith Moon used explosives to blow up his drums, but Pete Townshend could smash a guitar by hand in his sleep. Even Jerry Lee Lewis, in his prime, never broke a piano, but Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy have snapped more G-strings than an obese thong tester. (Sorry.)

 Even guitar paraphernalia can be irritatingly delicate, and the most frustrating thing that can happen to any guitarist is to drop a pick.

 ...Alright, the most frustrating thing that can happen to a guitarist is to realise that no matter how good you get, you'll never get as much pussy as One Direction, but dropping a pick is still annoying. It's doubly irritating if you're playing an acoustic guitar and your plectrum sproings off into the sound hole. There is absolutely no remedy for this except to hold the whole instrument over your head and shake it about until the pick rattles its way back out, at which point it WILL hit you in the eye.

 In an effort to combat this, an Australian entrepreneur has invented the Snake Pick, the world's first wraparound plectrum.

 

 "...Call me Snake..."

 As a guitarist, I am by nature superficial and and easily influenced by trends (deep thoughtful people play the violin, and people who aren't bothered about what others think play the banjo) so I bought a pack of Snake Picks online.

 The first pitfall of this was, of course, trying to get musicians to do something promptly. Ordering from any music supplier in September is a pretty good way to get something in time for Easter, but after a few days, and at the same time as an out-of-print book I'd ordered from California the day before the picks, I got my delivery.

 The first thing to note about Snake Picks is that, like actors and stop motion models, they look a lot bigger on screen. I'd gone with the "small" size, as I'm not a very big guy, but they still felt tiny in my hand:

 Still, size is always a gamble when buying things online - the elephant I once ordered turned out to be a Chinchilla in a gas mask - and I wanted a tight fit, so small size wasn't an issue.

 Wearing a Snake Pick evinces a smart, natural design, but ultimately, I found playing with one an awkward experience. This is because of a fundamental flaw in the designers' thinking, namely that everyone does everything correctly.

 According to received wisdom, the correct way to hold a guitar neck is with your thumb in the centre of the back, like so:

 Your thumb shouldn't protrude lazily over the top. Here's a bunch of amateurs doing it wrong:

Jimmy Page is getting it wrong on two guitars at once...

 With this in mind, the correct way to hold a pic is between the index finger and thumb, like so:

 Personally, I hold mine sideways and let my middle finger creep in on the action:

 

 This means I am, technically, doing things wrong, I'm sure. Unfortunately, correct posture and attention to detail are seldom what rock'n'roll is about.

 Keith Richards often removes his high E string entirely. Albert King played upside down and backwards. Django Reinhardt only ever used three fingers.* All of them were (or are) "doing it wrong," but individual playing style is a huge part of music, and the Snake Pick, for all its innovation, seems designed to stifle that.

 Personally, I found myself catching the sharp edge of the pick on the strings as my hand tried to revert to its normal, sideways position, and the effective weightlessness of the pick meant I subconsciously assumed I was playing with only fingers, leaving me to often hit extraneous notes by accident. 

 I'm the first to admit that I'm a painfully mediocre guitarist, and someone with more talent (or a more classically correct posture) may well love the Snake Pick. 

 For me, though, it just didn't work out, and much as I applaud the innovation, I feel it's probably destined for the "nice ideas that didn't work out" pile of musical artifacts. 

*This is admittedly because Django only HAD three fingers, but this isn't my point...