My Right Hand Philosophy

[jlerner]

I struggle with my right (plucking) hand. These are some things I believe in...at least this week:

• The fingers should be pretty straight. Not rigid, but more straight than curved.
• The last knuckle in particular--the one closest to the nail--should be relaxed, and not curved or tense. It should be like a guitar pick that “gives” some.
• The string should be struck around ⅛” - ¼” in from the tip of the finger. This allows a little room for error. But not too far, because that’s just too much finger to deal with in the stroke.
• The string should be stroked more downward into the bass than across.
• Use a good rest stroke onto the next string
• At the same moment that one finger strokes a string, the other finger should return to “ready position”. If you don’t do that, you will never receive the speed benefit of using two fingers instead of one.

Any agreement of disagreement?

[Matthew_84]

* The fingers should be pretty straight. Not rigid, but more straight than curved.

I used to play this way for about 4 years, but I just recently switched to using quite a different technique. I now play with about a 90 degree bend at my second knuckle (the one on my finger closest to my palm), and it became the knuckle which does most of the playing now, and I play from the bottom of the strings. When you do this, you'll notice that the ends of your index and middle line up with each other, instead of the middle being longer. In my case, it also drastically helped me play with less movement in my fingers. When I played with my fingers relatively straight, there were pretty large sweeps on each stroke, but playing like this has brought it a lot tighter (for me anyway).

* The string should be stroked more downward into the bass than across.

One thing I noticed instantly with my new technique is how much better the note rings. It's hard to describe where I play, but imagine that underneath the string closest to the pick-ups is one point, and the bottom closest to the floor, is another point. I pluck the string close to the middle of the two, maybe a tad closer to the floor. This allows the string to move more in a round movement than a straight up and down or side to side. The note sounds fuller. Another thing I like about my technique (not mine, borrowed from many people. Billy Sheehan has a video describing it if you're interested), is that since I'm not forcing the string down it's a lot less likely that I'll clack it against the frets, thus allowing me to lower my action a significant amount.

* At the same moment that one finger strokes a string, the other finger should return to “ready position”. If you don’t do that, you will never receive the speed benefit of using two fingers instead of one.

That's a very good point, one that isn't stressed enough, and really I need to practice it more. I've noticed that I can nearly play as fast with my index soloed than I can when I alternate. I didn't understand why, but I'll pay attention to this next time I play. Thanks!

[Mayers]

Since I use floating thumb technic ( it was really natural for me once I got a five strings bass like 10 years ago ).

So with that technic ... ridiculously easy to mute so your fretting hand can do something else than muting or being slowed down by the thumb touching the E strings.

So my plucking finger are curved and I don,t use a lot of force to make a sound, also , the strings move across than up/down because doing so the strings will hit the fretboard.