"Unlearning" chords (left hand technique)

[FuturePrimitive]

Ok, I've noticed a problem I have when playing successive notes that are in a chord pattern. For instance: (Forgive my crude use of tAbzZz, it's just an example.)

|---9---|
|--9-9--|
|-7---7-|
|0-----0|

When I play that pattern my left hand can't help but finger the chord and as a result all notes continue to ring. Sometimes that's fine, but more often than not I don't want that, I want to play each note of the chord, but not the chord itself. (Make sense?) My band has 2 guitars as well as me hitting synth pedals so sometimes there's just too much going on with letting them ring.

And yes, I'm a former guitar player so that's why my left hand automagically fingers and holds chords.

So any good techniques for unlearning this? (I think I already know the answer, it's the same answer for 99% of all questions in this sub-forum, PRACTICE!!!) Anyway, focus on left hand to release previous note? Right hand muting? Change the bass line so it's not a chord pattern my left hand is familiar with? SOL?

[Erick Lam]

Originally Posted by FuturePrimitive

Right hand muting?

Yes.

[mambo4]

try this exercise, a variant of a standard left hand technique exercise:

hold a chord shape with your left hand like normal

start plucking an arpeggio - up and down accross the strings

while plucking, relax pressure in your left fingers slightly until you get muffled/muted notes, then increase back down till you get the "full" note

practice changing your left hand pressure until you have a good degree of control going from muffled to full notes

then try leaving "muffled" pressure as your default, only increasing pressure in the string you are plucking.

[HaVIC5]

No, not right hand muting, left hand muting. Right hand muting is, in my opinion, less important than having a firm control in the left hand of every note you are playing. It will only get you so far, too - it only works when you ascend over a passage, but when you descend, its useless. "Pre-fretting" is what you don't want to do in most cases. Practice placing your fingers over the frets that you want to play but don't press down. This mutes the other strings as well as gets the fingers ready to play where they need to play. Play each note very slowly and let go of the note completely before moving on to the next note. I would suggest when you're first practicing this waiting at least a second in between each note as you practice to make sure there are no excess vibrations before moving on. Then, and your hand gets used to this, eliminate this pause.

[MarkTAW]

+1 HaVIC5

The goal is to only be pressing with the fingers on your left hand when you're actually playing the notes.

That pattern is a massive chord - 3 octaves and a 5th. I wonder if a different pattern may be more "bass player-y".

[Erick Lam]

Right hand muting is (...) it only works when you ascend over a passage, but when you descend, its useless.

Right hand muting works just fine for descending. It even sounds better. It just takes practice.

[artistanbul]

what they said.
I go for left hand muting, but with a proper floating thumb technique (wish I had), muting is super easy.

[HaVIC5]

Originally Posted by Erick Lam

Right hand muting works just fine for descending. It even sounds better. It just takes practice.

It depends on what kind of right hand muting technique you use. In my opinion, though, unless you're using some sort of ultra refined Gary-Willis style muting technique, it just isn't necessary when you've got your left hand muting all the lower strings descending.

[Scot]

The duration of the notes I play is nearly always controlled by the right (plucking) hand. I use a lot of left hand muting in my playing but not typically to control the durations of the notes played. Left hand muting for me is more about keeping open strings from sympathetically vibrating (the right hand is also involved in this as mentioned by others with the ascending/descending thing). I sometimes use left hand muting to get a deadened or muted sound but that's a completely other technique and not really related to this thread. Anyway, the accurracy of note durations is extremely critical in the way I hear good bass playing (and often overlooked by novices, IMO) so it's important to me to have a very solid technique for this so that I can "attack" the rests and give them their full durations as well.

Try to play the same line but as sticatto as possible and using only your plucking hand to make the notes sticatto. Slow it way down.

About your uncooperative left hand, the more you start thinking like a bass player and less like a guitar player the more your left hand will get with the program and realize that you don't need to finger 3 or 4 notes at a time and keep depressing them when you're only playing one at a time. The best way to start thinking more like a bass player is to learn some bass lines played by the masters. You're already hearing that it doesn't sound good to let the notes all ring out so it seems to me that you're ears are working and you're on your way.

Remember: bass and guitar have much in common from a design point of view but in musical function, bass has much more in common with the tuba than the guitar in the majority of the music.

[MrBorisSpider]

Use the thumb of your right hand or the heel of the palm to mute the string. You do have to float the thumb across the strings if you're playing fingerstyle.