Rest Stroke Technique

Hi Chris,

I'm not quite sure how to describe what I do - if you were here, it'd take you two minutes to get it...

Anyway, the salient points with rest strokes are the angle at which you play the string - whether you play 'across' it or 'through' it. Also, what you do with your thumb - I tend to have my thumb resting on the string below (the one that the rest stroke comes to rest on), and turned slight towards the neck, if that makes any sense... My index and middle fingers are then angled slightly towards the bridge, with the intention that they are sitting at a more equivalent angle on the string - if you hold your fingers at right angles to the string, your middle finger is much longer, and has to bend a lot to compensate. If you're turn your hand slightly towards the bridge, the relative lengths of your two fingers is evened out a little... I'll see if I can sort out some photos of this at some point...

Having my thumb on the string below also helps with muting any other lower strings (using the heel of my thumb) and also means that my hand position remains the same whichever string I'm on, rather than needing 4/5/6 different techniques if I left it anchored on the pickup. It also means that the angle I'm playing at on each string remains constant, so the rest strokes are more even in velocity and tone... at least, that's the idea...

WRT digging in, the biggest factor for me is where abouts along the string I am - I'm constantly shifting my hand in relation to the bridge - it's my primary tone control. Firstly, I have an arc of attack, I guess, where my hand moves further towards the neck as I move across the 6 strings, in order to even out the tonal differences inherent in strings of differing mass. but I also then change it for tone, and depending on how hard I'm playing. To really dig in I move it nearer the bridge.

With right hand technique in general I apply a principle that covers a lot of areas of my playing - that of parameter and permutation - what are the parameters, and how many permutations of them are there? Work it out mathmatically, or physically, and then work on the stuff that works musically... you find there are loads of variations on standard technique that serve to offer alternate sounds as well as ways to remain more consistent - sometimes using the same technique on different strings is an inconsistency rather than a consistency...

have fun!

Steve
www.stevelawson.net

 

Great post Steve! Even though I'm pretty comfortable with my rest stroke, that was very informative and well put.

 

Good question, Chris! Steve has described the technique very well so I'll just add a few things. For me using rest stroke is am important factor in keeping unused strings muted, so I use it pretty much all the time except when I'm playing chords. It seems to me that muting is more critical for electric bass than classical guitar, as bass can be pretty resonant – especially on a loud stage. I don't usually have too much trouble with noises generated from my finger coming to rest on the string, post-stroke. Perhaps this is because my stroke is pretty much parallel to the fingerboard as opposed to downward so the rest string doesn't come into contact with the board even when I'm playing pretty hard. Your free stroke training should be very useful to you in coming up with a personal style, though. I hope you'll continue to develop it along with rest stroke technique.

 

Chris,

it is very much a modified DB technique - the question of wrist angle is an important one - some people get round it by angling their bass skywards (John Deacon, Alain Caron), others like me just find a way to make it work...

Steve
www.stevelawson.net

 

Mr. Lawson,

Very nice response, being self-taught a few years before lessons, I fortunately didn't develop too many bad habits. I worried about my 'floating thumb' (vice anchoring) since I never seemed to see other guys play that way live or on TV or anything. I've since found it's quite acceptable, and having a pro verify it is, well, comforting. Also nice to say how your right hand is the primary tone control (and volume I'd add), the angle of your two fingers to the strings, where on the string to play, tips or meaty part of the finger, etc. - all stuff I employ without thinking much about it.

Anyway, I've never heard the terms 'free stroke' and 'rest stroke', could someone offer a quick explanation so that I might be able to get more from this thread?

 

Rest strokes... yep, I'm still working on this, it's a suprisingly difficult techniqie to master if you spent 10+ years playing accorss the strings with a very stacatto such as I did.

I'm getting the hang of it more and more every time I play, same with the true floating thumb thang (i.e. not at all anchored to a string or p/up).
Toughest thing I find is playing rest strokes lightly - for some reason i really wanna dig in when I use them?

 

I was just wondering how exactly one would use a free stroke or a rest stroke for different reasons?

When I play, unless Im chording, my fingers always hit the string under it. Is this a rest stroke? How would one go about using a free stroke? Thanks for the reply's as Im pretty confused.

 

Thanks for the reply Chris, after reading your posts I started experimenting a little bit. Your right, the sound of a free stroke is a little more open, I like it.

Something to put into a bassists bag of tricks.

 

..the magical thumb offers a host of tonal possibilities, both slap and otherwise. As I've been experimenting more and more with looping I've been trying to address the need for tonal variance in order to keep parts seperate and distinct ( I think Steve addresses that in a different thread) and I've been finding that thumb picking yields a wonderful blossoming tone for melodys and a nice muted thud for dubby bass parts. Combine it with a finger or two for some free stroke chords!

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J.