What on Earth gave him this kind of hand strength? WOW!!!!!!
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Mono Neon - now that's finger strength!!
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I used to wonder the same thing about Victor Wooten. Then I played his bass. Ridiculously low action and incredibly light guage strings. I thought I was going to break them all. He gave me a set of the strings and after installing them on my bass I had to take them off immediately. I imagine Mono is the same way. He doesn't appear to be man-handling the bass. His plucking hand pretty much seems relaxed.
Mono Neon did all this microtonal composition during his education, where the whole deal was using ultra-light strings and training himself to hit these micro pitches accurately with string bends. He's probably made himself the best in the world at performing this feat of microtonal playing, which is amazing. So you or I would probably need a few years of practice on his setup to get accustomed to it, because it's a thing he spent years creating and becoming a specialist in.
hah - I'd need more than "a few years" hehe. I understand light gauge strings and all, still pretty amazing. And it's not just "for show" / noise, it's very musical. So talented. More than I could ever be...
I will be Captain Obvious and say that MonoNeon and Victor Wooten would not be where they are if just anyone could do what they do.
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I have been trying to lighten up my setup for a couple years now, with an eye toward being able to keep playing bass through the second half of my life, and training your right hand to get a good sound out of a feather-light setup is a huge technical mountain to climb. I realize now I have always massively underestimated how hard it is to get your right hand to do all the nuances and techniques with much smaller motions and lighter touch.
One of the things my teacher zeroed in on as soon as I started lessons was the inefficiency of my hand movements. Changing a lifetime of habits is a bear of a challenge.
Two words: fingertip pushups.
That is a new take on nut busting.
Obviously. They're both incredible musicians. I hope I didn't imply otherwise. I was only remarking on Vic's action and strings....and speculating that Mono's may be similar.
The statement by OP was regarding finger strength. As talented as they are, I imagine neither of them have unusually strong hands. Theu can't brrak bricks with their hands. They are finesse player who use light touch and light strings for the most part.
That is all I was saying.
Bricks are brittle and not that hard to break, not that much harder than a 1" dried pine board (if I recall correctly). A round stream stone, on the other hand...
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I agree with Two_Fingers.
I can do that on my basses, because I use TI Flats and they are soft strings. It would sound awful done by me, but that's not the premise of the OP.
Also, he's pulling the D and G strings, because he's left handed and his strings are on symetrical order.
Besides being the softer strings, he's not pushing them, he's pulling them. Those strings are on top and he's doing the easier movement, pulling.
It's harder to push than to pull.
True, and he has said that's the main reason behind him, as righty, playing a righty bass upside down and backwards as a lefty - uses his stronger hand for fretting, and also means pull vs. push.
Still, freakin' impressive in my book.
It seems like lots of bassists never experiment with the super light gauge string thing since we've all been so conditioned to focus on "fat tone" and string tension (especially on the B). It really does make some techniques much easier to pull off though, it really makes the bass feel much different overall. Not trying to discredit the playing of people like Vic at all, I just think more bassists should give that type of setup a shot because it's a lot of fun.
Vic definitely uses a light setup, but he's also very much in to hand strength. He studied a version of Kung Fu that emphasized "tendon training" and can do some simple exercises that really work out your forearm and hand muscles and tendons. He attributes his relative ease with tapping to the hand strength he built up through the tendon training.
One I remember is to hold your arms outstretched in front of you, palms forward. Then open and close your hands as fast as you can for 2 minutes straight. This will put a burn on your forearms!
I have a hard time playing in tune with these…but they are a blast to play!
Light gauge strings have larger vibration amplitude and will buzz more, all other things being equal. So a lot of technique adjustment might be needed to keep from buzzing all over the place (and exceptionally good fretwork and setup).
Totally agreed. That's part of the fun IMO. You can really hone in what makes the Gary Willis light touch thing work so well. I never really "got it" until I set up a bass with slammed action and really light strings. The setup issue is definitely a hurdle though I agree.
