Techique question for a Guitar

[LowDown Hal]

My "first" guitar should arrive in a few days

When playing my bass I use three finger left hand technique until up around the 7th position. On these little bitty six string things it seems like 4 finger is the way to go even in first position.

So my questions are:
- will I confuse my poor muscle memory if I play the guitar with 4 finger technique and the BASS with three finger?

- what do you guys do?

THANKS

[mjolnir]

I don't really have much of a problem confusing my bass technique with my g****r technique considering how completely different they feel in my hands.

As for my playing technique, well... I'm a very percussive g****r player, tend to mute everything but the string I want and play them all to get the note I want and a percussive click all at the same time, generally means I have all my fingers doing something at any one time, be it playing chords or doing lead stuff.

[Christopher]

As far as the left hand approach goes, I treat them as separate instruments.

[Bard2dbone]

And you are depriving yourself of 25% of the fingers you should be making use of on bass. What's with the three finger thing? Use that pinky, man!

[lemur821]

You'll do what's appropriate at the time, right? Sometimes four finger on bass, and sometimes three finger on guitar, right?

[iamlowsound]

Use all four, all the time.

lowsound

[Bard2dbone]

I'd use more if I had 'em.

[Infernal Affair]

Originally Posted by Bard2dbone

And you are depriving yourself of 25% of the fingers you should be making use of on bass. What's with the three finger thing? Use that pinky, man!

He's probably using Simandl technique when he means three finger, which is 1-2-4. It's generally more comfortable to use up until the 5th fret or so.

For the original poster, I would say use all four fingers for guitar. It's easy to reach all four frets from first position with all fingers comfortably.

[Bard2dbone]

Simandl makes sense on URB, but not so much on BG.

I've seen a LOT of new and beginner bass guitarists use 1-2-3 and leave their pinky out of the equation. I did it myself for the first few months I played bass. Then I got a tongue lashing from a teacher who had taught himself to play bass left handed because he'd lost half of the last joint of his left pinky. He said having that fourth finger was just that important on bass. He still played guitar right-handed, but he played bass left-handed so he could have a whole pinky.

But, to agree, I also use 1-2-4 on the lower positions on URB.

[Pilgrim]

I learned to use all four fingers playing upright bass in an orchestra (40 years ago, but wottheheck). I doubt you will see many orchestral bass players not using the third finger.

Carol Kaye's advice aside, I use all four fingers on electric - there's not enough load on them to be a problem. I agree - it adds 25% to the number of notes you have available.