Maybe when Dragonforce tell them?

There is nothing wrong with your fingers touching the body at certain points. But proper picking technique will allow you to play comfortably without the needed stability you get from anchoring. Im not saying a slight touch, but when you lay down a finger on the body (IE Pinky or ring finger) to give yourself stability when picking you are greatly limiting the motion of the picking hand which usually leads to wrong picking technique. Such as picking with the thumb and index finger enstead of using the whole wrist in a fluid motion.

You shouldn't let anything prevent you from picking properly. A lot of notable guitarists "anchor" or keep a finger touching the guitar while maintaining mobility.

Petrucci: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLn5g5qIb2k
Loomis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXW5ryaaYm4
Norris: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k--6d9AF-Ko

Im not debating wether people can play well or not with or without anchoring. But anchoring is a crutch in the end, obviously those guitarist have been playing long enough to know when to anchor and when not to anchor. And im not arguing that anchoring makes you unable to play. But for the most part people that anchor begin to pick improperly, the guitarists you posted are picking well, using their whole wrists. For the most part beginning guitarists will tend to use less wrist motion and more of a thumb/index finger motion to pick when they anchor. The truth is you can play completely well without anchoring and it if you are learning to play you will be better off not starting off anchoring to begin with.

I see in my post may not have been clear, i did not mean that anchoring was improper picking technique, i meant to say anchoring usually leads to improper picking technique.

This post was edited by aokmaster15 on Aug 12 2009 07:11pm

Yeah I understand what you've said, but I have to partially disagree with you.
Beginner guitarists do not start playing with anchoring, I think it comes after. I don't know if I'll be able to make it clear enough, but let's take myself as an example. I've been playing for about 4 years, and the first year/year and a half, I've been playing how I learned without anchoring. But after that, playing more and more per week or day, my wrist started to get tired, and that's when I started anchoring. It did not actually change much, only if I had to re-adjust my picking technique to be more comfortable.

I don't know if it's clear enough, but mostly I agree on the part I bolded. Anchoring doesn't affect your playing, but you need to KNOW how to play before doing it. Not right when you're a beginner,