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Unruly pinkie
- Thread starter Anglerfish
- Start date
I don't really know or advocate all this lessons and watch so and so and yadda yadda.....you know what your problem is and you are working YOUR WAY to correct it. ALOT of technique doesn't work so well across the board...if it did their would be a million famous bass players who teach as well. It's all about comfort first, accuracy second. A possible alternative to train your pinky would be quit fretting with your ring finger for awhile until you build goid muscle memory from your hand. Maybe try fretting anything you would use your ring finger for with your pinky for a while, get used to it being on or barely above the strings at all times. It's "comfortable" economy of motion that wins the day, regardless of technique. As long a your physically comfortable, then anything else you do can be improved upon. As a last resort try taping your ring finger and pinky together and see if that doesn't help. I have small hands and pinky fret ALOT on 3 fret stretches below the 7th fret. Even if I'm fretting on the 1st or 3rd fret I have my fingers almosr touching all the way across and my pinky sitting barely a hair above the strings. Also...when you fret with your pinky try pressing all your fingers behind it.Not hard, just some incidental light contact. It's way more comfortable than fretting with only the pinky.
You are entitled to your opinion about what has been suggested in the thread so far. As I see it, the OP is NOT working HIS way to correct his technique. The very last words in his original post reads...."Any here, any suggestions.." I would say people are simply offering those suggestions.
Granted, a lot of technique is not a "one fits all" solution. However, there are tried and tested ways of playing in a way that is unlikely to cause injury problems over time. Playing with a straight wrist is one. Also, while some can use the "one finger per fret" technique on the lower frets, others find it a very hard stretch.
With regards the .."if it's comfortable..it's OK.." concept. This is not always the case. For example, people can play "comfortably" for years using a bent wrist, because this is how long it can take for the likes of CTS and RSI to become apparent. So, what may be comfortable now, can often lead to serious injury problems later on.
, I agree, however, there is a certain inherent aptitude that some bring to the table from the beginning, where as others tend to struggle and have to work harder than others with the "natural" touch. I'm not knowing his playing level. I know this thread is inundating him with technique this and that...but if you can't.play to a certain level than all of it is a distraction to what is really important....learning HOW to play music, first and foremost. All the technique in the world.cannot help overcome aptitude in the learning curve and all the technique can't help your groove or music sense. In most cases people work those things out as a natural progression, trying to tackle more complex.material and they are forced automatically to make adjustments to achieve success with the music they are attempting. I think my ultimate point was to not worry so much about it...learn music and musicality first...if its your thing being a bass player everything will work itself out over time, in the woodshed and on stage.
I think plenty of us have had to unlearn bad habits. Why go down that road when you can start off using technique that will serve you throughout the rest of your musical journey? No argument that the music comes first, but the technique you need to bang out quarter notes may not work when you aspire to something else. Might as well get the technique down from the get-go, so you're free to expand your musical horizons without having to constantly unlearn and relearn how to play the thing.
And yes, competent instructors can help you. Certain techniques may work better for certain individuals, but blind trial and error is a pretty slow and inefficient way to learn. Taking suggestions from people who have been there, done that can significantly speed up the process and help you avoid common mistakes. Beware people peddling extreme and unusual techniques. They might be visionaries, or they might be incompetent blowhards.
I agree entirely that it should be all about playing music. However, I dont see how you can pull this off, to the best of your potential, if your technique is not up to scratch. You also run the risk, of causing yourself unnecessary injury further down the road, resulting in the possibility of having to stop playing for a period of time, in order to allow the body to recover.
All this, because you did not take the time and patience to learn good (note I did nor say.. "correct") and safe technique at the beginning, when everything is new. Being an "all round" player involves all that you describe...BUT you need to have the wherewithal to put it into action in the most efficient and safest way possible.
In the case of CTS and RSI, by the time... "everything will work itself out over time"... happens, the damage may already be done and a visit to the doctor or physio is the order of the day.
I for one believe that JPJ uses his thumb to fret sometimes - the man does play chords and 18-string instruments and whatnot. But that has nothing to do with developing a good ergonomic basic technique.
As for advanced techniques, I've played around with using the thumb to fret and I don't believe it's a good solution for someone with small hands. People that do this usually have hands like Jimi Hendrix where the thumb reaches clear around to the thinnest strings anyhow. What I would recommend for stretchy chord voicings is to adapt upright bass 'thumb position' techniques. This is where you put your thumb on the same side as the rest of your fingers and basically use it as a capo. I use this very occasionally to do fun octave patterns without having to worry about string-skipping and you can also fret advanced chords this way. Again, this is advanced stuff though.
This video is silly. He says truthfully "The thumb is there to support the fingers; it is not there to grab the neck..." right after demonstrating how weak and crappy his technique is without the thumb.
It's all relative to what level you are on, or aspire to. If your playing " continuum" yeah, you definitely need solid technique. If you aspire for a little less, or your not committed to that level of performance and wind up being happy playing "rock and roll all night" then flawless technique is not as necessary. We have all seen examples of both. For some it was Rush, Dream Theatre and fusion and beyond within 6 months of starting to play. For others its Kiss and Zz Top after 25 years. If I'm playing Tush every weekend I don't think it's that important that I'm playing 1 finger per fret with my thumb pressed in the perfect center of the neck. If I'm playing Havona, that's a different story. This poor guy has had advice and tutorial basically shoved down his throat without anyone knowing what it is he wants to do as a musician. If Blink 182 is what he aspires to in a punk band, none of that stuff applies as its pretty easy to play 3 notes over a 4 minute song, even with bad technique. If he's going for broke and wants to be like Hadrien than everything said on previous posts applies and much more. That pretty much is the point I've been getting to....that's all.
Again, I respect, but disagree with your opinion. I think you are missing his point. It was not a demonstration about technique as such. He was merely pointing out that it is possible (granted..no one will do this all the time) to play without the thumb on the back of the neck. Following on from that, it is possible to play with the thumb being where it naturally needs to be on the neck. The same thing (playing without the thumb) is often advised to people who want to learn just how much pressure to apply when fretting. When doing this, yes, their fretting technique is going to be crappy, but if it helps them in their goal (i.e. fretting with a lighter touch) then IMO the exercise is worth the effort.
I would have thought that any bassist, regardless of his level would aspire to having a technique that would allow him to play to the best of his potential, and at the same time limiting his chances of injury. That's all.
hands dont have any muscles. the muscle's that connect to the tendons in your hands and fingers are located in your forearm.
Stronger arms = stronger hands.
but, what @leosmith said was %100 bang on the money.
EDIT - Turns out hands do have muscles, just not our fingers
Thank you for the vote of confidence.
Wish I could say that my left hand was "The Best Ever", but it turns out that I have a bit of a fly-away pinky too. This thread is making me pay more attention to the LH this week. Time to do those exercises again.....
I just realized that the root of the problem with flying/curling pinkie is not in pinkie itself but in the ring finger. When playing a note with the middle finger I simply can't make the ring one rise without doing anything kinky with my pinkie to pull it back.
I believe I can fix it by doing more stretching excercises without the bass and focusing more on stretching fingers back separately rather than on stretching them wide.
I believe I can fix it by doing more stretching excercises without the bass and focusing more on stretching fingers back separately rather than on stretching them wide.
You're wrong about JPJ....sorry to burst your bubble. You are probably right about technique, especially for someone who only uses 4 strings, but you seem to think you know all the answers. You do not.
You again? Dude, just quit already.
John Paul Jones himself describing his left hand technique: "I just use two fingers." That's a direct quote.
See it for yourself at 1:56 of this video (I don't want to ruin it for you, but he gives a quick demonstration of a run showing his two-fingered left hand technique, and the fingers he's talking about are his index and middle, not his thumb.)
Also, he plays many of his famous lines and riffs over the course of this 2-part interview. He does occasionally wrap his thumb around the front of the neck to mute the E string (which you may have misinterpreted as fretting notes), but at no point can I see him actually fret with his thumb. Glad I could help clear this up for you.
....and he has only ever used two fingers on the left hand? Never mind the thumb. He never used the ring finger to fret? OK @Rocktometrist you got me ! You are the JPJ authority. LMFAO.
