How exactly does Les and others that do strumming do this thing? All I can see from the front is he kind of opens his hand outward and catches the right amount of strings with the top of his fingernail. What's the deal there? Les also does a kind of string slicing with hand style. How does that one work?
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Les Claypool strumming
- Thread starter GabeN
- Start date
i dont' know what you mean about the string slicing, but the strumming takes a bit of practice, and it's really hard to pick up jsut buy watching him do it.
the way i do it i bring my middle finger up against the meat of my thumb in the palm of my hand and go down and flick the finger downwards, then for the upstroke bring it back into the palm of your hand, it should be a relaxed easy motion. getting the accuracy is the hardest part. but if you're playing double stops or chords then it's not much of an issue. others may use first finger, i prefer middle. but once you can do one you can any, other than maybe the pinky.
the way i do it i bring my middle finger up against the meat of my thumb in the palm of my hand and go down and flick the finger downwards, then for the upstroke bring it back into the palm of your hand, it should be a relaxed easy motion. getting the accuracy is the hardest part. but if you're playing double stops or chords then it's not much of an issue. others may use first finger, i prefer middle. but once you can do one you can any, other than maybe the pinky.
From what I remember his style is an adaptation of a banjo technique called frailing I think? It also helps to have a really nice bass st up very low to get away with.
I'm mainly curious...what part of his hand/finger is he hitting the strings with? I don't want to sound like Les...I'm just wondering how he does it....
DiabolusInMusic
Functionless Art is Merely Tolerated Vandalism
That is how I strum, I never listened to Primus though, I copped my technique watching classical and flamenco guitar players. I could see it being a banjo thing, but the banjo technique I lifted was rolling with my thumb and first two fingers, works good for solo bass stuff.
I play the ukulele and have always done stuff like that using a similar technique to uke strumming. Basically using your nail as a pick and use mainly wrist motion.
Don't trust it, unless it came from Les Claypool. I'm very sure the strum is this anyway:
--4--
--2--
-----
-----
I tell you, the transcription in that book is very accurate, I did other cover of primus with the help of that book that you can check on my youtube channel ( clefdefa ).
I tried A and E together and it doesn't sound right compare to B and E.
EDIT : Oh I think we said the same thing but differently ... It never came to my mind that you may play that song on a four strings bass. The sheet music I put is played with a 6 strings bass like it is on the original CD and in the video clip but after that he played it on a 4 strings bass. So inhe case of a 4 strings bass yep your chord is right B and E ( but you play the E an octave lower )
I tried A and E together and it doesn't sound right compare to B and E.
EDIT : Oh I think we said the same thing but differently ... It never came to my mind that you may play that song on a four strings bass. The sheet music I put is played with a 6 strings bass like it is on the original CD and in the video clip but after that he played it on a 4 strings bass. So inhe case of a 4 strings bass yep your chord is right B and E ( but you play the E an octave lower )
Clawhammer and frailing are essentially the same thing.
I picked up an SX banjo and the part where he speeds up, actually translates pretty well to bass especially if you're halfway decent and double thumbing.
If you listen to a lot of Les' new stuff you can definately pickout some frailing patterns. Like in Red State Girl.
Actually I read an interview with him and he took one banjo lesson and learned that technique then said it reminded him of Stanley Clarke.
Stay Brown,
Rev J
