Regarding Mr. Manring's Right Hand Technique

[armywalaby]

Mr. Manring,
First of all, I watch the videos of you on youtube obsessively, mostly the ones from your show at . I had to ask about your right hand technique:

1) What kind of exercises did you do to become proficient at the way you use your thumb? I thought about maybe trying it on classical guitar first to get a hang of it?

2) Example: The video of "Helios", you are using your fingers to strum and your thumb to hit your lowest string, correct? Do you use your thumb to go through the string in passages like that, or to just bounce off the string? Or is this something that depends on the piece?

Mr. Manring, you are a massive inspiration as well as the reason I started getting serious about bass again. Thank you.

[Michael Manring]

Thanks so much for your interest, armywalaby. The right hand technique I'm using in "Helios" is a bit complicated to describe, I'm sorry to say. I'm using both the methods you mentioned, plus a few others. Someday I'll try to publish some kind of definitive description of it -- although I'm still working on it myself!