downpicking

English

Noun

downpicking (uncountable)

1. (music) The technique of playing a stringed instrument with a plectrum using all downward strokes.
   • 1968, Art Rosenbaum, Old-time Mountain Banjo, page 84:

     You will know whether you want a tone ring, and if so, what kind, and whether or not you want a resonator (most people would rather do downpicking and two-finger picking on banjos without resonators, although this feeling is far from universal — my own all-round "working" banjo is a thirty-year-old Vega with resonator).

   • 2009, The Ghosts of Harlem: Sessions with Jazz Legends:

     What I noticed was that Charlie did a lot of downpicking, like Eddie Durham, and he wasn't playing any modern chords.

   • 2015, Ken Perlman, Everything You Wanted to Know About Clawhammer Banjo, →ISBN, page 175:

     Pete Seegerin fact credits Crisp with teaching him to “frail,” but apparently it was Stu Jamieson who was Crisp's major disciple and the main revivalist exponent of the downpicking style through the 1940s.

Verb

downpicking

1. present participle and gerund of downpick