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Anchored vs Floating right hand

#81
Gaolee said:
I am indeed a weekend warrior who only plays for an hour or so most days, and only about three hours straight ever. People who make a living playing probably play as much in a day as I play in a week or more.


I'm actually more concerned about what happens to my left hand, and that's why I like having the neck in as vertical an orientation as possible. A vertical neck means neither wrist is bent much, at least for me. It means anchoring doesn't result in much wrist bend. Having the bass slung low bends the left wrist a lot while allowing the right wrist to be straigher. High is the reverse. Vertical allows both to relax. I suppose you could use a slap technique with the bass like that, but I sure can't. The rare times I slap require the neck to come down for a while. Then it goes right back up.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you are a perfect candidate for an upright bass. I had an electric (NS NXT 4 string) and it was on an adjustable stand that you could set at the perfect angle so that no strain was put on either wrist and it was a pleasure to play. Damn...now I'm sorry I sold that bass! I think you would like one of those.
 
#83
11guitarguy said:
Sounds like you are a perfect candidate for an upright bass. I had an electric (NS NXT 4 string) and it was on an adjustable stand that you could set at the perfect angle so that no strain was put on either wrist and it was a pleasure to play. Damn...now I'm sorry I sold that bass! I think you would like one of those.
Click to expand...

I play an upright bass. I love it.
 
#84
I used to anchor on the neck pickup. I changed it because I found I was hitting the pickup on the follow through when playing the E, and I swear my P Elite Lace Sensors were picking it up. Now I do a bunch of things. I wedge my thumb under the E, removing it to play the E. If I'm working the D and G heavily, I rest on top of the E and A, sometimes anchoring on the A. On top of the strings, it's at about a 45° angle. The rest of the time it's perpendicular. I just let my hand do what it wants.
 
#85
I mostly anchor my thumb on the pickup--on both my EB-3 copy & my SR500--hey both have pickups in the right places.
Sometimes my hand does float--but mostly it's anchored.

Some basses are tricky to anchor--but Leo made basses with finger rests, and then thumb rests--so since he made the first successful ones--he got to set the style as well--so anchored--unless floating works better for the song.
 
#87
Interesting topic. I come to the bass from playing guitar, so my technique is colored by that. I've seen instructional videos which recommend anchoring the thumb on the pickup ... but that never felt comfortable or natural to me. So what I wound up doing was to "float" the thumb when playing two finger style, similar to the guy in the video on the first page of this topic, except a bit more loosey goosey. Much of the time I actually play with my thumb as well as a couple of fingers, same as I do on guitar. This and the floating thumb are what feel natural to me. But as was said early on, "If it feels and sounds right ... it is right!"

I used to have a guitar teacher who thought it was "wrong" to wrap the LH thumb around the neck, that the thumb should be centered on the back of the neck for "proper" technique. Guess Hendrix and BB King weren't doing things right somehow ...
 
#88
The wrist bend you have to wrap your thumb is probably why I rarely wrap my thumb while playing a bass guitar. Unless the neck is really vertical. My LH technique on the upright is different, since I use the webbing between my thumb and first finger for leverage. It's not exactly wrapping the thumb, since the neck is so deep. It's more a matter of using hand mass instead of thumb leverage. On a BG, my thumb generally does stay in the middle of the neck. It just evolved like that. I do pretty much the same thing playing a guitar. I'm not BB King or Jimi Hendrix, so I don't have much reason to attempt their techniques.
 
#89
Yeah, I actually keep my LH thumb in the middle of the neck most of the time, on both bass and guitar. On guitar though, it's useful for string bends and vibrato to get the thumb around the neck a bit more, helps get the wrist into the whole motion. But really, whatever works is what players will do. On bass there's generally not so much need for bending or vibrato, so I might wrap my thumb just to rest other muscles sometimes, but it's usually just on the back of the neck.

And yeah, I float my right thumb (when I'm not using it) - actually rest the palm on the strings some of the time, which is useful for damping. There are spectacular players with lots of different techniques, so I guess it's whatever "floats" your boat, right? ^_^
 
#92
My first teacher (whom I greatly respect), uses the fixed anchor. I don't. We both get shows and play to a decent level.
His muting technique is to use rest strokes and mute the strings below the one he's playing with his third and fourth fingers. This is in addition to left hand muting techniques. I used it while I was a fixed anchor player and it was very effective until I started on three and four finger technique.
If it works........ :thumbsup:
 
#93
I self-taught myself to play bass when I was around 11 or so, and like any player, I started out on the easy stuff like Green Day, RHCP, Three Days Grace, etc. Since I didn't have an instructor to tell me if I was playing wrong, I just kept going with the technique I started with, floating thumb. I'm not sure how I picked that technique up, it probably just felt more efficient and easy for past me, and it still feels efficient and easy for me today. I looked at youtube videos of people playing songs on bass, and noticed they anchored their thumb on the pickup, then I looked at my own playing and noticed I didn't do the same, and for a while, I thought I was playing bass all wrong. I then went to try harder songs, like Dream Theater's 'The Dark Eternal Night', and 'The Dance of Eternity' I tried the anchoring-thumb-on-pickup technique and had way more trouble playing, so I moved back to floating my thumb on the string below the one I was playing on. Keep in mind this was 5 or 6 years ago. It wasn't until recently I discovered this forum and found out that it was called the 'floating thumb technique' and was an excepted way of playing bass. At 17, I have minimum to no trouble playing those songs and other songs of that caliber of difficulty now, and I feel better knowing I wasn't playing wrong for all these years.
 
#94
sg101 said:
I self-taught myself to play bass when I was around 11 or so, and like any player, I started out on the easy stuff like Green Day, RHCP, Three Days Grace, etc. Since I didn't have an instructor to tell me if I was playing wrong, I just kept going with the technique I started with, floating thumb. I'm not sure how I picked that technique up, it probably just felt more efficient and easy for past me, and it still feels efficient and easy for me today. I looked at youtube videos of people playing songs on bass, and noticed they anchored their thumb on the pickup, then I looked at my own playing and noticed I didn't do the same, and for a while, I thought I was playing bass all wrong. I then went to try harder songs, like Dream Theater's 'The Dark Eternal Night', and 'The Dance of Eternity' I tried the anchoring-thumb-on-pickup technique and had way more trouble playing, so I moved back to floating my thumb on the string below the one I was playing on. Keep in mind this was 5 or 6 years ago. It wasn't until recently I discovered this forum and found out that it was called the 'floating thumb technique' and was an excepted way of playing bass. At 17, I have minimum to no trouble playing those songs and other songs of that caliber of difficulty now, and I feel better knowing I wasn't playing wrong for all these years.
Click to expand...

I think what you describe is called "Movable Anchor," where you don't plant your thumb on the pickup to play all strings, but jump around as you describe. Floating thumb to me is the Todd Johnson video, where you don't plant your thumb on anything, but instead hang it like a limp hot dog against the strings, and brace your forearm against the upper chamfer of the bass body (assuming it has one) for stability.

Generally, for finger playing, I think floating thumb is the superior technique for 2 reasons:

1) There's no need to train separate muscle memory for each string. You move the entire apparatus (your hand) up and down, so your plucking fingers never change position.
1a) There's really no need to focus any attention on planting your thumb on the string right beneath the one you're playing, and the associated complexity of learning how to hop multiple strings (and replant).
2) Far superior muting of non-played strings. You can mute 1 string if you plant your thumb on it, but you can mute 3+ if your limp hotdog just rests across them.
2a) Your hand is in a position that's more conducive to palm muting than any anchored technique I've tried.

I was pretty much forced into floating thumb, due to RSI in my right wrist. I physically didn't have the dexterity in my wrist needed to play movable anchor, or plant on the pickup when wearing my wrist brace. The blessing in disguise is after a week or so, I was much faster and more accurate with floating thumb than any other plucking technique I had attempted beforehand, wrist brace or no.
 

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