Chords for Bouzouki Lesson - Picking for Reels

_ Here's how I hold the pick for playing bouzouki or mandolin.
I see a lot of people holding their pick this way, with the thumb and first finger.
In fact I've seen that in a lot of instructional books as well.
So that's okay if you've learned that way, that's great, a lot of people play that way
and [D] they sound great.
I do it a little differently and I know that some other really great players use this as well.
So it's just using two fingers and the thumb.
I find it gives me a little bit more control over the pick, you know I can angle it differently.
Obviously when the pick is totally flat against the string and you pluck it, then it's a little
more, it's got better attack than if you just kind of have it at an angle or the other angle.
It's just a little bit of a different sound.
So that's _ one of the reasons that I use two fingers and I have a little bit of a control there.
And I also find that even just the actual picking is easier, but that's just for me.
Anyway, so that's holding the pick.
The other thing I do is I hold it fairly close to the tip of the pick and I use a fairly hard pick.
Again, it's just because I like that strong attack on the note.
[G] _ Obviously when you're holding it further away, _ _ well there's less resistance when you're picking.
So I like to keep it fairly close, unless I'm going for a pretty loose sound, for example
if I was [N] strumming.
Now for the rest of the position of my hand, I have it, when I'm doing single notes, like
single notes in a melody, I would actually have this part of my wrist just beyond the
bridge, so resting on the strings just beyond the bridge.
And that gives me a sort of an anchor so that I can have really fine motion and I have a
pivot point there.
But when I'm strumming, I would have more of a loose wrist and it would come off of
the bridge, unless I wanted to do some muting, using the palm of my hand against the string
to get a muted sound.
_ Anyway, so the first thing we're going to do now is just a straight, real rhythm.
So it goes like this.
One E and a two E and a.
Now you're always going to alternate between down and up, so [E] down up, down up, [G] down up,
down up.
One E and a two E and a.
Let's see if I can make you see that a little better.
One E and a two E and a.
One E and a two E and a.
And there should be a bit of an accent.
There's different ways of doing the accent, but _ for this first exercise, just accent beat
one and beat two.
So one E and a two E and a. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ And once you can do that fairly fast and hear those accents come out pretty clearly, _ _ then
you're set to do tons and tons of reels, because that's the rhythm that reels use.
_ It's of course going to be a challenge to incorporate that rhythm into the melody, but
anyway, that's the exercise.
Now if you want to go a bit further, you can accent it differently.
Here's a pattern that's also very popular.
So instead of accenting beat one and two, you accent beat and and and again.
So one E and a two E and a.
One E and a two E and a.
One E and a two E and a.
One E and a two E and [D] a.
_ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[D] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _