Any pick players in the house?

[saabfender]

Roger Waters' picking technique is entirely different from Carol Kaye's. Barely on the same planet.

 

[goldenglory18]

I've been a rock and roll pick player for my entire "career." I've tried 1mm+ and other XH picks and just never could get comfortable with 'em. I found the Dunlop Gator Grip picks to be just the ticket for me and my style. I stay with the .71mm 90% of the time and occasionally go up or down while recording depending on the track/line. I've never looked back....

 

[two fingers]

I was "anti pick" for waaaaaay too long. These days I go both ways.

As far as which kinds of picks, I'm all over the place. I have half a dozen kinds or more on my pick holder any given show. If I am doing down and up strokes on 16th notes I use a thinner pick. If I am pounding out staccato quarter notes I go thicker and palm mute.

It's another great weapon to have available. Sure, you can get away without one. But why try?

 

[RocketMusic]

When I was just starting out back in the stone age, there was no internet, no MTV, no Bass Player magazine. What we did have was Guitar Player magazine, which had a column written by Carol Kaye. I learned a lot from those columns including proper left hand technique, but probably the biggest thing was her use of the pick. I had started out playing with my fingers, but began to incorporate using a pick in my playing. Unlike today where there seems to be some kind of stigma attached to using a pick by some people, they were lots of respected players using a pick. Maybe because I didn't know any better, I just played both ways. If I was playing a tune where the original guy played fingerstyle, that's what I'd do and if they'd used a pick on the record, then that's what I'd do.

As a lot of folks have pointed out, Carol Kaye is a great resource for learning to play with a pick. She always used flats with a hard pick and also played pretty hard. Based on recent videos, she still does.

Based on my own experience, unless you are going for a sound like Chris Squire or Live-at-Leeds-era John Entwistle, flats are perfectly fine with a pick. Pick selection is very personal and it sounds like you are trying a lot of different shapes and thickness, which is what you need to be doing. I like a little flex in the pick, but some people like them perfectly stiff. Good news is that finding the right pick is probably the cheapest gear investment any of us will ever make.

While you are getting your technique together I would recommend you practice using different pick directions: all down strokes, all up, alternating, sweep, etc. Eventually when you are playing the tunes you will naturally gravitate to the technique you need for the song you're playing.

There are a couple of little things that I never really appreciated until I had been playing with a pick for a long time. These may sound dumb or insignificant to some people, but I've found that spending some time focusing on them was very beneficial to me. First off is learning to hit the string with the pick flat against it rather than at an angle and with the pick perpendicular to the top of the bass. I've found that you have better control that way and you can always vary the angle of the pick for a different tone, which I do sometimes. Also be cognizant of how much of the tip of the pick you are using. You don't need much to get a good sound and, generally speaking, the less you use the faster you can be ready to strike again. OTOH there are tones you really can't get unless you dig in and use a lot of the pick, though that can tend to slow you down. The idea is to just to realize that you have options and find what works for you.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the tips!

I think my reluctance to use a pick mostly stemmed from how bad I was the few times I tried to use one. Of course, that experimentation took place many moons ago when I stunk regardless of how the strings were getting plucked. LOL

I don't think I ever really faulted anyone for playing with a pick, but maybe I did... when I was coming of age, it was mostly hair band bass players who played with a pick. Hard to take some of them seriously. The guys I paid attention to and wanted to emulate mostly played with their fingers: Duck Dunn and Geddy Lee were the big ones for me. And with other heros, it just never dawned on me that some of the them (Billy Wyman, John Deacon, Chris Squires, etc.) played with a pick all the time (or a lot of the time). This was back in the days of listening to records, so I wasn't seeing any visual cues.

It wasn't until I recently started listening to Pink Floyd intently that I thought to myself that my own tone didn't sound very much like the tone on the record, and it wasn't an EQ or a pickup sort of thing that was off. For some Waters has always stuck out in my mind as a pick player, so I figured I'd give that a go. And what do you know? SMH

All of which makes me want to go back and listen to (and try playing again) all that stuff that I now know will sound better with a pick in my hand. The Beatles, Yes, Allman Brothers, Queen, Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, Van Halen... and on and on. It's a long list.

 

[unbridled]

Make sure your right AND left hand muting chops are on point, too so you can calm the tone down when needed.

I used to always use a pick. Now I use them maybe 20% of the time.

 

[Thank You Leo]

Make sure your right AND left hand muting chops are on point, too so you can calm the tone down when needed.

Absolutely !!!

I realized this morning that I had left out string damping as one of those subtle things you don't always think about when you start using a pick. When plucking with fingers you have all these extra digits available to dampen unwanted vibrations. If you hold the pick in the traditional way with your picking hand basically in the shape of a fist you will need to learn new techniques to dampen strings. Palm muting is an obvious one, but if you are are playing legato and really want the desired notes to sustain you will need to learn to lightly dampen using the edge of your palm and/or the fleshy part of you thumb and definitely utilize your left hand for damping as well.

 

[RocketMusic]

Yeah, palm muting just came naturally to me with a pick since I do so much of that when I play finger style. I'll have to pay more attention to my left hand, see what it has to offer.

It's been years since I've felt that sensation where your left and right hands feel out of sync. Playing with a pick has definitely brought that back a little bit, and I'm anxious to get past that phase.