Calluses

The only way to get callouses is to play.

There are no shortcuts.

while doing this might make your fingers the tiniest bit tougher, it would be very insubstantial and more or less worthless.

Why not have you bass on your lap and play? un-amplified, just noodle around, that would help some with callouses. the more you play the more your fingers get worked and the more callouses you build.


btw, thread topics are useful so that people will actually have more reason to click on the thread.

and welcome to talkbass

 

...and a perfectly good way to kill/gunk up a nice bright set of strings.

 

When you learn not to play too hard, you won't have any callouses at all, just slightly thicker skin.

But I also like to play(!) or practice(!!) unamplified. It helps with control and sound IME.

When you have the bass in your hand, why wasting your time with gimmicks?

You need dexterity and muscle memory, not callouses.

 

Those are callUSes, BTW, not callOUSes. (Bruce and I went around on this recently.)

 

Who cares, it's Hornhaut anyway....

 

Common usage - I've seen it as "Callouses" in at least half a dozen places since - other websites, magazines, books etc.

Callous is what every intelligent person says - of course if you want to be classed as anal....!!

 

References please... I'd be very happy to have my instinctive use of 'callous' vindicated by the usage of reputable authorities... but I'd rather find that I was wrong and change than insist that I'm right.

Wulf

 

I think the confusion is that in a lot of foot-related stuff - podiatrists and chiropodists - they refer to "an area of callous" - spelled like that - so the whole thing has become blurred - and naturally people then refer to them as "my callouses", you mean!!

 

Then you must not think the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary are intelligent? Personally, I trust what was perhaps the finest single group of lexicographers modern English has seen over whatever a few half-baked websites might say. Add to this the fact that -ous is known to be almost entirely, if not entirely, an ending of *adjectives* in English, not of nouns, and I think the case is least as clear as Jamerson vs. Kaye. [ducks flying vegetables and dead cats] How many English nouns can you think of that end in -ous, and how many adjectives?

An error can be quite common and still be an error by accepted standards. Believe me, I'm an editor and I see this kind of thing *all the time*.

BTW, the situation is much the same with mucus and mucous, which are perhaps equally commonly misused. Mucus = noun ("his nose was full of mucus"); mucous = adjective ("his mucous membranes were irritated").

 

heyheyhey, it's only my second language...

 

Here's one for you, Bruce:

www.feetforlife.org

This is a public site put up by a UK organization--or should I say, organisation--called the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists.

Do a search for "callus." Then do one for "callous." Satisfied?

 

Per Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary

cal·lous ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kls)
adj.
1. Having calluses; toughened: callous skin on the elbow.
2. Emotionally hardened; unfeeling: a callous indifference to the suffering of others.

cal·lus ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kls)
n. pl. cal·lus·es

1. A localized thickening and enlargement of the horny layer of the skin. Also called callosity.

2. The hard bony tissue that develops around the ends of a fractured bone during healing.

There ya go.

 

why dont you do manual labor? thats how i got all mine

 

what I was about to say...

Anywho Why screw around rubbing your fingers on the strings when you can play it instead and get some practice time in. Im sure what you said can build your calluses, but why bother when playing will do the same thing quicker?