Zaphod_Beeblebr

While I do agree that anchoring can be way over-examined, I would also say that telling people just to do what they like can lead to technique that is very definitely bad. Like Marty Friedman for example; I love the man's playing, he's a complete genius... but his picking hand is an abomination, there's no doubt about that at all.

It all comes down to what can and cannot be done: I have heard and seen people play Marty's solos all over the place but I have never, never seen Marty go crazy with alternate picking. Marty is limited where his imitators, even if they aren't as creative, are not.

FYI: Tension is exactly what it says: tense muscles. You shouldn't be feeling any more tension than you need to simply move your hand/fingers when playing guitar, anything more than the basic level needed for those actions is too much and a waste of energy. Also in bad cases you get tension in two competing sets of muscles so they're pulling against each other, this leads to a complete lack of control and in particularly bad cases can potentially lead to injury, although it's not actually very common from what I know.

__________________