My official entrance to the Talk Bass forums!

[Shoestick]

hey, I joined these forums a while ago but I havent really posted alot, so now Im officialy joining! Ive been playing for about a year, and Im juts starting to learn slap. My question, however, is about fingers vs. picks. I play 10x faster with my fingers than w/ picks, I can jump around the strings and scale pretty quickly, however the trouble comes with a certain song. Dont laugh, but its the King of the Hill theme song; w/ a pick I can play as fast as they do during the intro (even though thats on a guitar of course) but with my fingers, I just cant the rhythm down. Any suggestions on what to practice to increase the straight up speed of my plucking?

[Chris A]

More of a technique thing......


Chris A.

[lowerclef]

As paradoxical as it may sound, the way to get speed is to practice very slowly. Slow it down to where you play every note cleanly. Keep working on that and when your muscle memory develops, your speed will naturally increase. The important thing to remember is never to force your hands to play faster than what's comfortable. This takes patience and time, but you will see great results if you stick to it. And don't use a metronome at first. Think only of the movements of your hands. You can use it later once you get the movements down.

By the way, there's nothing wrong with picking. Practice this too. It never hurts to have more tools in your arsenal. Same thing here - practice slowly until your hands get used to the motion. There are some lines that sound better with fingers, and some that sound better with a pick.