Les Claypool strumming

[GabeN]

How exactly does Les and others that do strumming do this thing? All I can see from the front is he kind of opens his hand outward and catches the right amount of strings with the top of his fingernail. What's the deal there? Les also does a kind of string slicing with hand style. How does that one work?

[labgnat]

i dont' know what you mean about the string slicing, but the strumming takes a bit of practice, and it's really hard to pick up jsut buy watching him do it.

the way i do it i bring my middle finger up against the meat of my thumb in the palm of my hand and go down and flick the finger downwards, then for the upstroke bring it back into the palm of your hand, it should be a relaxed easy motion. getting the accuracy is the hardest part. but if you're playing double stops or chords then it's not much of an issue. others may use first finger, i prefer middle. but once you can do one you can any, other than maybe the pinky.

[Calaverasgrande]

From what I remember his style is an adaptation of a banjo technique called frailing I think? It also helps to have a really nice bass st up very low to get away with.

[ignignok]

When you do it, your hand should be extremely relaxed, its all in the wrist, not the fingers. You just gotta get used to adjusting your wrist to hit the right number of strings. Just takes practice is all.