Pick vs Fingers Question

[portlandguy]

I wish I could play better with a pick - been playing bass since I was 16 and am now 37, still cant pick well. - maybee this winter I will sit down and learn properly

[Calaverasgrande]

Originally Posted by jeffbonny

^^^This is the plain truth. Two or three years ago when I started to get serious about attaining some real chops with the pick I lurked around mandolincafe.com for several months to see what wisdom the mando players had about the pick. For them the difference between up and down strokes is not even a topic of much discussion except with newbies. The old hands there completely understand the difference in sound between up and down strokes. The conversation with them is what to do with the difference.

A down stroke has the force of the weight of your arm transferring into the thumb and can convey a lot of attack. With an up stroke there is potentially less energy transferred to the pick and there are more potential places to release that energy so it can have a softer attack. Opening the hand is one way to release energy and soften an upstroke even more. Closing it is a way to come closer to the harder attack of a down stroke. We're talking subtleties here but as you move forward the subtleties are what matter.

You can get your up and down strokes to sound similar but it takes a lot of work over several months to start to hear obvious results in your playing.

I dont pick from my arm or my shoulder. That is horrible form with no control.
Like many other things, it is all in the wrist.
However, if I want a solid wall of identical 16ths, it will be all downstrokes.

[jeffbonny]

Originally Posted by Calaverasgrande

I dont pick from my arm or my shoulder. That is horrible form with no control.
Like many other things, it is all in the wrist.
However, if I want a solid wall of identical 16ths, it will be all downstrokes.

Regardless of the possibility that much of your fine motor control is coming from your wrist it's a fact that your wrist is attached to your arm. It doesn't take much motion at all for the arm to give its weight to your picking. A half inch of movement will do it. It's not like when I play a fast bebop head my whole arm and shoulder are flailing around out of control to get all those 240bpm 8th notes out but they are moving with my wrist. Place your left hand on your right forearm at the elbow and move your wrist in a picking motion. Unless you have extremely unique technique your forearm is moving at least slightly. Even that slight motion is enough to add the weight of the forearm to the down stroke. Certainly playing a solid wall of down stroke 16ths your forearm is moving. Mechanically there's no way for it not to be.

[Calaverasgrande]

Originally Posted by jeffbonny

Regardless of the possibility that much of your fine motor control is coming from your wrist it's a fact that your wrist is attached to your arm. It doesn't take much motion at all for the arm to give its weight to your picking. A half inch of movement will do it. It's not like when I play a fast bebop head my whole arm and shoulder are flailing around out of control to get all those 240bpm 8th notes out but they are moving with my wrist. Place your left hand on your right forearm at the elbow and move your wrist in a picking motion. Unless you have extremely unique technique your forearm is moving at least slightly. Even that slight motion is enough to add the weight of the forearm to the down stroke. Certainly playing a solid wall of down stroke 16ths your forearm is moving. Mechanically there's no way for it not to be.

are you familiar with palm muting?

[jeffbonny]

Originally Posted by Calaverasgrande

are you familiar with palm muting?

So you palm mute everything? If it's something you use 100% of the time that's the "extremely unique technique" I was talking about. Nothing wrong with that but a palm muted perspective isn't completely relevant to non palm-muted technique. And to be honest I'd have to see video of you playing palm muted octaves and 10ths to believe you could do that without some noticeable arm movement.

[wideload]

My mistakes when playing with fingers are broad, with more bloom at the end of the mistake. When using a pick, the mistakes are most often more dynamic and clearly defined.

[Duke21]

Originally Posted by jeffbonny

So you palm mute everything? If it's something you use 100% of the time that's the "extremely unique technique" I was talking about. Nothing wrong with that but a palm muted perspective isn't completely relevant to non palm-muted technique. And to be honest I'd have to see video of you playing palm muted octaves and 10ths to believe you could do that without some noticeable arm movement.

Interesting, I do not palm mute, maybe it is a flaw in my technique, but I do not feel that I need palm muting. I do hold the pick I such a way that only 1-1.5mm of the tip is exposed in front of my fingers, so it is is more like thumb muting.....
Anyway on my Ric I placed the hand on the pup cover and due to tight string spacing I do not need to move my hand much, thus it is mostly my wrist which works. But when I play behind the pup cover or on my Geddy or my CV60 P bass I need to move a bit more when I have to go between the E and the G string.

[RonniePudding]

This is a really long thread, and think most of the salient points have been made 10 times. Seems to me the answer is obvious when inverting the concern of the OP.

Does a guitarist look stupid when s/he doesn't play with a pick?

When you see Ry Cooder play, do you think "Man he's just a failed bass player who's falling back on guitar but can't figure out how to use a pick properly..."?

[Duke21]

Originally Posted by RonniePudding

This is a really long thread, and think most of the salient points have been made 10 times. Seems to me the answer is obvious when inverting the concern of the OP.

Does a guitarist look stupid when s/he doesn't play with a pick?

When you see Ry Cooder play, do you think "Man he's just a failed bass player who's falling back on guitar but can't figure out how to use a pick properly..."?

Just watch Spock's Beard, the bass player play with a pick, the guitar player with his fingers...

[gavinspoon]

Originally Posted by gavinspoon

Ok. The song in my sig is played with a pick. Can you tell me whether the first 3 bass notes are upstrokes or downstrokes, or some mix of the 2. Basically it can only be DDD, UUU, DUD, UDU, DDU, UUD, DUU or UDD

I think we all lost interest in this thread, but for the record it was UDU