CAN´T GET MY FINGERS TO SOUND THE SAME AS EACH OTHER

[rymiraflores]

Here is one for the fingering experts...I have played with a pick for 30 years and recently began to dabble with fingers....I kind of feel more "connected" to the bass with just fingers....but...I get good tone from index finger...clacky from middle finger and clackier from ring finger....is it to do with different finger lengths or what?

[fjadams]

That's one of the things I like about finger picking a bass. You can get different tones from every finger and your thumb. Using two fingers, or three on every different note results in sounds you can't get any other way.

[Strat Hater]

Don't know if this will help, but how are your fingernails? If mine get long I have the same problem. If I cut them the problem is solved

[rymiraflores]

I keep my nails very short

[rymiraflores]

It seems to be about different angle of attack..don´t know how to fix it

[klokker]

I would check and see if you are "plucking" the string. A good fat tone is made IME more by pressing down on the string. I guess by that I mean your follow through is more down than up. Finish by resting the finger on the next string up to practice. Maybe you're already doing that, I don't know. But I like my fingerstyle tone and I start with my finger way more on the top of the string than on the side of it.

Ring finger takes a long time to develop.

[SouthportJim]

I noticed the same thing when I started really concentrating on walking bass lines...I couldn't get the same tone from each finger (in my case it was the 2nd finger that sounded best).

So I began to pay close attention to how I pluck the strings. Here's what I'm doing to try to get consistent:

1) As suggested, I keep my right-hand nails short (this was a switch for me 'cause I play acoustic guitar too).

2) If I pluck the strings 'straight on', I get a slightly different tone from each finger. Not a big deal in rock but sounds like hell on a slow walk.

3) If I rotate my fingers a little to the left, so that I strike the string more with the sides of my fingers then the tone evens out between fingers. I was really surprised at the range of tones from different angles of attack.

I've been playing a long time and should have already known this stuff, but I only noticed it when I started regularly playing 'quiet' music alongside an acoustic guitar.

;-)

[JimmyM]

Try to pluck with each finger in a way that will sound the most like each other. And remember that your fingers don't pluck the string at the same spots so they'll already sound a little different. And don't get too fixated on getting exact matches. If you get them as close as is reasonably expected, that should be close enough to not be noticeable.

[Session1969]

Originally Posted by SouthportJim

I noticed the same thing when I started really concentrating on walking bass lines...I couldn't get the same tone from each finger (in my case it was the 2nd finger that sounded best).

So I began to pay close attention to how I pluck the strings. Here's what I'm doing to try to get consistent:

1) As suggested, I keep my right-hand nails short (this was a switch for me 'cause I play acoustic guitar too).

2) If I pluck the strings 'straight on', I get a slightly different tone from each finger. Not a big deal in rock but sounds like hell on a slow walk.

3) If I rotate my fingers a little to the left, so that I strike the string more with the sides of my fingers then the tone evens out between fingers. I was really surprised at the range of tones from different angles of attack.

I've been playing a long time and should have already known this stuff, but I only noticed it when I started regularly playing 'quiet' music alongside an acoustic guitar.

;-)

+1, practice alternating your two fingers while playing simple eighth notes. I did to ac/dc until one day, I couldn't hear any difference. It's an important step. Tilting at first is essential because your middle finger is longer than your 1st finger, so it kind of shortens it up and makes it even.

[Matthew_84]

I had a similar post about this months ago, and I posted a bunch of what I had tried. People kept throwing out suggestions, and I tried every one: playing with the bass headstock hiked up so the index and middle tips hit the string at the same spot and kept fingers straight; playing with a 90 degree bend at the second knuckle so that my fingers were completely perpendicular to the bass, which made them the same length; plucking harder with my middle and softer with my index, vice versa; even curling my hand in a very uncomfortable angle so that I was playing with the sides of my fingers.

It wasn't until someone posted and told me that for them their index finger is just thinner and the tip is sharper than their middle, and that any spot of the middle finger's tip was meatier, and because of this it would not sound the same no matter what I did. This proved right and why even when I played with the sides of my fingers, or even finger lengths, or on new flesh that has no built-up callouses the issue remained.

Since then I've just played 1/8ths (or 1/16ths) trying to minimize the difference. The greatest factor for me is that the index is stronger and plucks the string harder. I just had to lighten it a tad and use the middle a bit harder and that made a big improvement.

Just work on it until they sound fairly similar, but they will never sound exactly the same and don't expect them to. After all, it is the difference in tones like that that makes your playing sound more dynamic and less robotic, and everyone will like it better. It sounds more natural. No one will notice it anyway, especially with everything else going on.

The thing that drove me to find this stuff out was really that my G string was really nasally sounding, and this was accentuated by my twangy middle finger and the difference was only unbearable on the G string. Believe it or not, a setup cured this. I lowered the relief and the saddle height and raised the pick-ups. The G string is a lot rounder sounding now than it was before.

[Tanner5382]

How are you positioning your plucking hand on the bass? A bad position could hinder your finger-style playing.