Shapes
Some picks have small protrusions to make them easier to keep hold if the fingers start to sweat, which is very common on stage due to the hot lights. Some picks have a high-friction coating to help the player hold on to them. The small perforations in the stainless steel pick serve the same function. Many players will often have spare picks attached to a microphone stand or slotted in the guitar's pickguard.
The equilateral pick can be easier for beginners to hold and use since each corner is a playing edge.
The shark's fin pick can be used in two ways - normally employing the blunt end or the small perturbations can be raked across the strings producing a much fuller chord or used to employ a "pick scrape" down the strings producing a very harsh, scratching noise.
The sharp edged pick is used to create an easier motion of picking across the strings.
Bass players who use a pick normally use much heavier picks than guitar players. Some players prefer slightly thinner picks to increase speed and endurance.
Some guitar pick shapes are patented. Usually those patents claim ornamental design.
Read more about this topic: Guitar Pick
Famous quotes containing the word shapes:
“For life is but a dream whose shapes return,
Some frequently, some seldom, some by night
And some by day,”
—James Thomson (1834–1882)
“All know that all the dead in the world about that place are stuck
And that should mother seek her son she’d have but little luck
Because the fires of Purgatory have ate their shapes away;
I swear to God I questioned them and all they had to say
Was fol de rol de rolly O.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Nothing can happen nowhere. The locale of the happening always colours the happening, and often, to a degree, shapes it.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)