About Face

[patman]

Anybody ever abruptly change how they play the instrument? Was a fingers player for 30+ years.

I started running scales and playing Charlie Parker bebop heads with a thumb pick and a finger pick sort of like a steel player...just sitting in front of the TV before going to work...

Liked the sound and feel so much, I started playing that way live...pretty much converted to being a pick player. The Gibson bass sounds good with a pick and round wounds.

Must be mid-life crisis...

[4stringer77]

I almost never slap anymore. Glad you're enjoying the new approach.

[luve2fli]

I almost never slap anymore

Ditto.

I also use Ed Friedland's "upright on an electric" technique quite a bit ..... pinky side of the palm muting across the strings in front of the bridge and pluck with the meaty side of the thumb. I guess the thumb plucking really becomes much like using a pick ..... if the pick was made out of a cross-section of kielbasa sausage .....  . Lots of thump and a pretty convincing upright sound in a pinch.

[Highlander]

Went the other way, Pat... tin full of picks to rattle...

Slap...?

[patman]

Tried to slap out a tune last night, and it's been so long that I really didn't have any facility with it...course the strings are really dead right now...need to re-string before the weekend...slapping has gone by the wayside with me also...

just looking for a nice clean studio type of sound.

[Chris P.]

I can't slap, even if you'd held me at gun point, but I do use my thumb quite a lot nowadays. I started doing it because I saw John Stirratt of Wilco doing that a lot. He puts his little finger under the bridge pickup and I often use the finger rest of my Mustang, like it was made for originally.

One day Timber Tones sent me a lot of big picks, made of wood, stone, bone, leather, the lot. The thick leather ones are strange and nice. They sound like your fingers, but you play different rhythmically.

[uwe]

Welcome to the dark side!!!

[Highlander]

Best not go out of your depth...

[Granny Gremlin]

I started out fingerstyle.  Loved the control and the slower attack.  Now I play with a pick since being in a punker band and it's hard going back.  It don't take 30 years to get rusty, only like 10.  Every now and then I try to play a no chord song fingerstyle just to see.  Usually a sloppy mess, but my Jamerson hook is still OK.

[patman]

I have not figured out how to get staccato notes on an open string yet. This is a piece of control I really miss.

[ilan]

It has happened to me with guitar. I realized that I started playing it Jeff Beck-style - thumb and finger. Still got a pick stuck behind the nut but I hardy ever use it now.

On bass I'm still about 50-50. Was 90% pick but for the last 3 years I'm in a big band, and swing walking lines are much more natural fingerstyle.

[uwe]

"Still got a pick stuck behind the nut but I hardly ever use it now."


(Inquisitively) The nut or the pick? Confusing news like that always disconcerts me!

Sounds uncomfortable at the very least, but you hopefully alternate between left and right. 

[ilan]

 

[Highlander]

Never thought of that... a white Buck Dharma pick I got from an early 80's BOC gig is wedged into the neck pup as a finger rest... been there for a few decades now...

[uwe]

Ah, harvester of picks!



Always loved that riff, it was industrial before industrial was invented.

Did someone mention slapping?