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Alternating index and middle fingers
- Thread starter jazzbass127
- Start date
Nah
Alternating is tailor made for stuff like those funky quick notes he plays in the chorus. They're not triplets, either...they're 16th notes. Jamerson raked because he had to since he only used the index finger. I would totally play that part alternating.
Nah
Thanks for taking the time to listen. (I just did, too: thanks for posting the correction about the 16ths on the descending riff--don't know why I remembered them as triplets.)
Lately, Ive been playing lots of motown songs. Those quick descending notes jamerson does are pretty much impossible without raking! Alternating down the strings feels like walking down stairs backwards. Tripping all over the place. Have much practicing to do.
What'd I say?
You're going to have a period of getting used to it where you will suck at it, just like a golfer fixing something about his/her swing, and then once you get past that, it gets a lot easier.
I've been working on trying to clean up my raking as much as possible, but have a question for Jimmy and other proponents of strict alternation. This is also related to OPs original question about starting with one finger vs the other....
What do you do when you are playing a repeating figure that contains an odd number of notes? It seems to me that unless you sneak in a rake or a hammer-on somewhere, you inevitably wind up starting the figure with a different finger the next time around (e.g., index instead of middle, or vice-versa).
A specific example that I've struggled with for some time is "Roadhouse Blues," starting on the E at the 7th fret of the A string and then playing the final A-to-B chromatic run on the D string. If you start with, say, your index finger, you get i - m i - m i - m on the E string, followed quickly by i - m - i on the D string. Which finger do you now use to start the pattern again on the E? If you rake from that last note to the E (A string), you're back to the same fingering pattern -- i.e., playing the first note with your index finger -- but if you don't, you find yourself starting the next go-around with your middle finger. I suppose you could make this work, alternating between starting with the index and starting with the middle, but it seems like it would be a lot easier to be consistent if you used the same pattern each time around. So how do you handle these kinds of situations and maintain strict alternation?
What do you do when you are playing a repeating figure that contains an odd number of notes? It seems to me that unless you sneak in a rake or a hammer-on somewhere, you inevitably wind up starting the figure with a different finger the next time around (e.g., index instead of middle, or vice-versa).
A specific example that I've struggled with for some time is "Roadhouse Blues," starting on the E at the 7th fret of the A string and then playing the final A-to-B chromatic run on the D string. If you start with, say, your index finger, you get i - m i - m i - m on the E string, followed quickly by i - m - i on the D string. Which finger do you now use to start the pattern again on the E? If you rake from that last note to the E (A string), you're back to the same fingering pattern -- i.e., playing the first note with your index finger -- but if you don't, you find yourself starting the next go-around with your middle finger. I suppose you could make this work, alternating between starting with the index and starting with the middle, but it seems like it would be a lot easier to be consistent if you used the same pattern each time around. So how do you handle these kinds of situations and maintain strict alternation?
That's exactly what I do...start the next go-around with my other finger. That's what Dave LaRue said to do when I took lessons off him. He said it was easier than doing the reach-around with your leading finger, and it would be a good idea to learn how to play all your repeating riffs starting on either finger to work on your consistency. When it sounds the same regardless of what finger you lead off with, that's consistent.
Same for me. If I think about it too much it messes me up. My fingers just do what they do. I have noticed that I often rake. But that is all unconscious.
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Huh, interesting. On the one hand (no pun intended), I totally get that you ought to be able to play any line starting with either finger and make it sound the same either way. And if, say, a series of measures each containe an odd number of notes, I certainly don't have any problem starting each successive bar with a different finger; I do that all the time. But when the pattern repeats -- whether it's every bar or every four bars or whatever, it seems like there would be an advantage to consistently starting the entire pattern on the same finger each time. Again, I don't mean that it should be necessary to do this in order to sound consistent; it just seems like that consistency would make it easier (mentally?) to lock into the groove or something. I dunno: Does that make any sense?
Anyway, thanks: I'll definitely give it a try. Maybe what I'm thinking doesn't make sense, or at least is trumped by the advantages of maintaining strict alternation.
^ + 1
It depends on what I am playing now and what comes next. I also use my ring finger for really fast runs.
It depends on what I am playing now and what comes next. I also use my ring finger for really fast runs.
Do you think you could explain this and/or give an example? What exactly would it "depend on"?
By depends on I mean what is the best left hand fingering, what strings am I traversing.
As an example. Let's say I need to play C, Bb, A. Where the C is A-3 (String-Fret).
fFor that, I would start with index finger on left hand on A-3 and middle finger on right. So:
String: A-3 | E-6 | E-5
Left: I P I
Right: M I M
The left hand is pretty obvious, but the reason I start with the middle finger on the first way is because I prefer to traverse strings low to high with the index finger moving to the next string. And from low to high, the reverse. That beiing said, there are exceptions. In this example, I might reverse and start with the index finger. Which way would depend on the next note I would have to play after that.
