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Pick technique ( to pick or not to pick)

X

xkmattx

May 8, 2011
34
0
#1
Long story:

I started out playing guitar when i was 13 years old. I have played many different styles from rock, pop, metal, jazz, blues, and country. I always found myself playing lead guitar and was always trying to push myself as far as i could go. I had an uncle that was a touring bassist in the 70's and he played with all sorts of major acts. He sadly died 3 years ago, and when that happend i decided to really delve into his musical catalog. In the process of doing this i completely fell in love with bass. I ended up selling all of my guitar gear, bought all bass gear, and never looked back. I found that a lot of the songs that i really enjoy; were not because of the guitar riffs, but rather the mood that the bassist was setting.

my 2 favorite bass players of all time are Leon wilkeson (lynyrd skynyrd) and Phil Lesh (greatful dead). I like these guys for many reason but one of the biggest is the fact that they both play rock and country and both do it well.

I am currently playing only country music. Every practice i go to i force myself to play finger style because that is what has been engraved in my mind as being correct. However, i find that finger style is no where near as efficient for me, and that i really dont enjoy it as much as playing pick style.

MY question:

I know this topic has been beaten to death on this forum, and i dont mean to try and revive it, but i do feel like i need some personal justification to feel comfortable being primarily a pick player.
Can someone explain to me how i am correct in wanting this please?

Thanks for reading my wall of text and please feel free to condemn or criticize anything i have said.

:bassist:
 
#2
You play the way the song demands you play. If that means you play with a pick, then you use a pick. If that means finger-style, then finger-style. If the song require you beat the strings with a frozen hot dog, then hot dog it.

There is no 'correct' or 'incorrect' in this other than imposing a style of playing that either doesn't suit the song or is too prohibitive for you to be able to play the part.

You do what you gotta do. I (personally) prefer to have more than one way of plucking the stings in my bag of tricks. Pick, fingers, palm-muted with pick, palm-muted with fingers, slap & pop (ala Stanley Clark), thumb and multi-pop (ala Victor Wooten), chucking (using the thumb as if it were a pick), index finger back and forth as if it were a pick, classical guitar style (using thumb and fingers, one per string) - and on, and on, and on...

Don't let some misguided sense of 'correct' and 'incorrect' - especially someone else's opinion - dissuade you from exploring any style that works for you.
 
#5
who told you fingerstyle was "correct"? you probably should slap them upside the head and call them "Mary".
if you need e-peen acceptance to try something that nobody here will ever see you do on a gig or at home, you're possibly too far gone to even help.

personally having played country for a while (albeit not currently) i wouldn't see much use for it because it doesn't fit tonally for what i'd need. i use a pick when i want to get pick tone. fingers when i want finger tone. they are different and used for different things. there is no better/worse. until you get this last paragraph these threads will just be repeated until the end of eternity.
 
#6
Audience doesn't care. I played exclusively with a pick for 10 years and nobody from the audience ever came up to me and said "why don't you use your fingers". Nobody in various bands I was in did either.

Flatpicking has a nice clicking attack, but you can EQ that out if you want, or if you're fingerpicking you can EQ it in if you want. Either way, audience doesn't care.

People say it's easier to play in the pocket with fingers. Not true. It's easier if that's all you're used to. People who are equally comfortable with pick and fingers say they can play in the pocket with either.

I'm moving more into finger style just because I want to. I find flatpicking takes more practice (for me) to keep the skills up. If I do all fingerpicking for a couple of weeks my flatpicking starts to suffer, but not vice versa. Maybe the typing I do at work keeps my fingerpicking primed, I dunno.

Except now I'm off all playing until my Carpal gets better :(
 
#7
xkmattx said:
my 2 favorite bass players of all time are Leon wilkeson (lynyrd skynyrd) and Phil Lesh (greatful dead). I like these guys for many reason but one of the biggest is the fact that they both play rock and country and both do it well.
Click to expand...

Both prominent pick players......go with what gets you the sound you're most happy with.

I'm sympathetic to trying to be as versatile as possible, but as someone who uses a pick 90% of the time, I think there is also some benefit in "specializing"--getting really proficient with one technique. It always amazes me that I have so much to learn with pick technique even though I've been doing it for nearly 40 years.
 
#8
Rickengeezer said:
Both prominent pick players......go with what gets you the sound you're most happy with.

I'm sympathetic to trying to be as versatile as possible, but as someone who uses a pick 90% of the time, I think there is also some benefit in "specializing"--getting really proficient with one technique. It always amazes me that I have so much to learn with pick technique even though I've been doing it for nearly 40 years.
Click to expand...

"Specializing" can also be "Limiting". However - there are many, many bass players who have made careers using one style. In my opinion, they are fortunate. If you are a bass player who wants to be versatile and able to adapt to a wide variety of situations, either learn how to play with a pick in a way that emulates all other plucking styles or learn a wide variety of plucking styles - OR plan to be pigeonholed - possibly happily pigeonholed, but potentially boxed in/typecast, etc...
 
#11
Let me remind you, since you already know, the audience doesn't care. Their only interest is, did they hear music?

If your band mates have an issue with the pick & can't deal with it, that is a problem. OTH, you're a lead guitar player & might have some ideas about how the "country music" you're playing adapts to the bass. Look at how Vic Wooten has adapted blue grass picking to the bass.

This is a good time to have confidence in yourself & your sense of music. If it looks like a guitar, plays like a guitar & can sound like a guitar ... use it to make music. 8-)
 
#13
These have been some great responses.

I do agree that i like the sharper attack of a pick BUT... i also roll my tone back quite a bit to give it more of a finger style tone. My pick technique is so far advanced over my finger style that i still plan to practice finger style to get better.

I also broke my wrist when i was 14 and when i play finger style for too long it really starts to ache. This doesnt happen when i play with a pick
 
#14
tZer said:
"Specializing" can also be "Limiting". However - there are many, many bass players who have made careers using one style. In my opinion, they are fortunate. If you are a bass player who wants to be versatile and able to adapt to a wide variety of situations, either learn how to play with a pick in a way that emulates all other plucking styles or learn a wide variety of plucking styles - OR plan to be pigeonholed - possibly happily pigeonholed, but potentially boxed in/typecast, etc...
Click to expand...

I know I don't have the conventional view here, but my view is based on the notion that it takes a long time--Gladwell estimates 10,000 hours of practice--to become "expert" on something, meaning there is a qualitative shift in your ability at that point. Following that logic, if you spend 5,000 hours playing fingerstyle and 5,000 hours with a pick, you'd end up proficient at both, but essentially an amateur at both. OTOH, if you had spent the entire time practicing one or the other, you would reach that mystical "expert" threshold. Here's a little read from Gladwell:

Outliers: the story of success - Malcolm Gladwell - Google Books

Can't say there is definitive evidence to support it but it's an interesting take.
 
#15
Just play pick.

I have stuck with fingerstyle and worked to develop it so that I can duplicate a lot of pick sounds (punchy attacks, etc) mainly beacause I like to use a broader range of techniques in my playing. If I am playing prog metal, I'll probably throw slapping and tapping into almost every song... can't do that with a pick.

There were times where I picked up a pick to play machine gun style rhythms instead of using fingerstyle. I've since improved my playing enough it doesnt matter. I think I get better tone using combinations of slapping and fs in the B string range.
 
#16
Rickengeezer said:
I know I don't have the conventional view here, but my view is based on the notion that it takes a long time--Gladwell estimates 10,000 hours of practice--to become "expert" on something, meaning there is a qualitative shift in your ability at that point. Following that logic, if you spend 5,000 hours playing fingerstyle and 5,000 hours with a pick, you'd end up proficient at both, but essentially an amateur at both. OTOH, if you had spent the entire time practicing one or the other, you would reach that mystical "expert" threshold. Here's a little read from Gladwell:

Outliers: the story of success - Malcolm Gladwell - Google Books

Can't say there is definitive evidence to support it but it's an interesting take.
Click to expand...

The crux of that 10,000 hour formula is meant to be applied to the pursuit of a major skill - like bass playing - not all the micro-components that make up that skill - like picking and finger style. If your interpretation were THE interpretation, there would not be enough time in the typical human life-span to become and expert at anything that required more than a few simple tasks.


251 said:
Let me remind you, since you already know, the audience doesn't care. Their only interest is, did they hear music?
Click to expand...

Well - the audience doesn't care if they don't hear anything wrong with what they are listening to. If a 'Chris Squire' sounding, gritty, picked bass line were laid under Patsy Kline's rendition of 'Crazy' - the audience would care.

Don't confuse the idea that the audience may appear indifferent to the more understated individual aspects of a band, like how the bass player plays his part, when that band does their job properly with the idea that the audience doesn't care at all about what each player is doing - they do if you do it in a way that draws attention to yourself - especially in a bad way. One could argue that is the goal of the band - to make the audience NOT care about what each individual player is doing - but that the song is played in a way that they enjoy.
 
#17
tZer said:
The crux of that 10,000 hour formula is meant to be applied to the pursuit of a major skill - like bass playing - not all the micro-components that make up that skill - like picking and finger style. If your interpretation were THE interpretation, there would not be enough time in the typical human life-span to become and expert at anything that required more than a few simple tasks.
Click to expand...

I don't know where the line between "major" and "micro" might be, and I don't think Gladwell knows, either. But, for example, I'm sure that line divides upright bass and bass guitar. Granted pick vs. fingerstyle isn't as large a difference, but I still believe there is some advantage in becoming highly proficient in one before worrying too much about the other.
 
#18
Rickengeezer said:
I don't know where the line between "major" and "micro" might be, and I don't think Gladwell knows, either. But, for example, I'm sure that line divides upright bass and bass guitar. Granted pick vs. fingerstyle isn't as large a difference, but I still believe there is some advantage in becoming highly proficient in one before worrying too much about the other.
Click to expand...

I suppose one could twist that 10,000 hours theory into a practice routine that would effectively turn one into an idiot savant. But Victor Wooten, while highly skilled at some rather unique plucking techniques is also highly skilled at the traditional ones as well and he most certainly did not focus himself narrowly on his more 'showy' techniques at the sacrifice of the traditional, broadly applicable ones.

And again - it comes down to your own goals. Do you want to be a 'savant' or do you want to be 'in demand'? I am not saying 'pick players' are not in demand. I am saying players who think developing broad and diverse technical abilities (especially things like plucking styles) is somehow detrimental to their overall proficiency are misguided.
 
#19
No brainer......just play YOUR way.

For the life of me I'll NEVER understand why there always needs to be a "right way" and a "wrong way" when it comes to technique.

I played exclusively with a pick for 42 years. No one EVER questioned it and I've played LOTS of gigs in all those years.

When I picked up an ABG, it became abundantly clear that I was going to have to learn fingerstyle to get the tone I wanted so, I started learning to play fingerstyle. My chops are not as good as my pick playing chops (yet) but, I have the basics down and something to build on.

So, IMHO, playing with a pick all those years was not "wrong" but, adding fingerstyle to the arsenal was the "right" thing to do. The same belief applies in reverse as well. That's the only "right" and "wrong" I see in terms of technique.
 
#20
I only play with my fingers if I drop my pick mid-song and can't readily grab another one, like if I'm in the middle of singing. I CAN do it, but I prefer not to. My ex-gf used to argue with me all the time that picking a bass was cheating. There's no rules, just whatever sounds best. I prefer a pick because I like the hard attack it gives. With metal and distortion I think it cuts better. Some people who play with distortion prefer the sound of fingers. It's all personal preference.

And I agree with an above post- the audience has no idea. Heck most people don't even notice the bass player until they stop playing or play the wrong thing...!
 

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