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Why I keep hammering the Carol Kaye pick method

#443
dunlop 2mm gator picks or graphite 2mm adamas (OMG SO GOOD) and I usually bounce around between the last fret and between the neck and bridge pups for tone sake but probably settle near the last fret if anything (there are some nice overtones I tend to get). I mute A LOT and never EVER have pain in my picking hand.

also dabbled with flats and half rounds for a bit but went back to regular rounds normal gauge. I barely expose any of the tip of the pick and use my thumb to also mute notes and stuff.

This wasnt a technique I strived for or anything it just sort of worked for me and my ear.


I am a TERRIBLE fingerstyle player IMO.
 
#444
JimmyM said:
John Wetton, a highly skilled bassist who could play pretty much anything you threw at him, and whose playing and singing with King Crimson, Roxy Music, Uriah Heep and UK established him as a world-class bassist with tech skills to spare (don't judge him by Asia), has carpal tunnel syndrome in his right hand. He's had one surgery that apparently hasn't taken, and now plays with a thumbpick taped to his thumb. When he played with a pick before, he pretty much played like a guitar player (since he plays guitar, too, not surprising). I'd see him do things like anchoring his pinky, palm muting, all downstrokes, etc. The guy can still play, make no mistake, but he's greatly diminished by CTS and has to play in pain.

People dismiss me sometimes when I talk about Carol Kaye's pick method preventing these injuries, but there's no doubt in my mind that Wetton's CTS was brought on by playing bass with a pick like guitarists. Guitar strings are thin and wussy. Bass strings are thick and manly. You can't play pick bass like a guitar. Sure, a lot of you have been getting away with it. Wetton got away with it for 40 years. I managed to go for 25. I was on the verge of developing it. Within 10-15 seconds, my hand would ache like crazy while I used a pick, so naturally I dropped it and played fingers only for a few years, but I missed the attack of a pick in some songs and wanted to do it again, so I learned Carol Kaye's pick method. Took a little while to get used to it, and it definitely doesn't look as cool as playing pick bass like a guitar, but I have been totally pain-free playing pick bass for the last 3 years. Carol may not be a day at the beach, but she certainly can play, and she would play 16 hours a day in the 60's and remains totally pain free to this day.

Here's how to do it. You can also see videos of Carol playing on www.carolkaye.com and probably Youtube if you need a visual. And scattered out in Carol's Player's Points and Forum is a lot of info on it, with a much better explanation of it all than I could do.

1. Never use a light or medium pick. Use at least a heavy. With a heavy, the pick does the work and takes the beating. With lighter picks, you do the work.

2. Never anchor your hand because it causes you to take your hand out of the position it needs to be in to be pain free. Want to palm mute? Stick a sponge under the strings instead. Palm muting is especially injurous, even though a lot of people do it.

3. Pick close to the neck where the strings are looser. I use light strings (.040 G) so I can pick from between the neck up to the first pickup without pain. For .045 G and higher, you're better off staying close to the neck. Yes, I know it sounds boomy up there. But it really doesn't sound as boomy as you think in a mix. If it really irritates you, roll off some bass instead.

4. Hold your hand to where your pinky is slightly raised off the strings, and keep your wrist parallel with the strings. Move your hand from the wrist in a side to side motion, and NEVER MOVE YOUR THUMB!!! Moving your thumb is a killer.

5. (OOPS...forgot this one...extremely important!) Don't play just downstrokes. Always play down-up. Downstrokes take your wrist out of the side to side movement and cause pain. "But Jimmy," you protest, "Downstrokes sound heavier than upstrokes!" Hmmm, sounds like you need to practice more. If someone can tell the difference between you playing all downstrokes and you playing down-up, just practice it until you get it.

Takes a little getting used to, but it's so much better than ending the night with your hand in an ice bucket or having surgery once a year. You may be getting away with the stuff you're doing for a while, but it'll catch up with you eventually. Trust me.
Click to expand...

++ to all this stuff;
I never realized I've been doing Carol Kaye method all these years until I saw this. It just seemed the natural way to do it. Of course I wasn't a guitar player when I started so I didn't have those habits to unlearn.
 
#445
Fergie Fulton said:
Basics are shown here, to get the true CK method of playing forward to the neck rather than the bridge, just dip the back of the palm to the string, the strings on bass used are Rotosound Funkmaster.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp_kk-w3Puo&feature=plcp
Click to expand...

But isn't that the anchoring Carol Kaye says thats bad? When I play with a pick my palm don't touches the strings and it seems to be a much more stressful handposition when I try to mute the strings with my palm. Most of the time the muting isn't a problem because I can mute unplayed strings with my left hand. The problem is when I have to play open strings e.g. in Seek & Destroy:

Code: 
G|---------------------------------5---|
D|-----5h7------5h7-----------5------7-|
A|-0-0-----0-00-----0--0-8-77---77-----|
E|-------------------------------------|

or

Code: 
G|------------------|-----------------|
D|------------------|-----------------| 
A|------------------|---------7-5-----|
E|-0-0-0-0-3-5-3-5\-|-0-0-0-0-----7-6-|
 
#446
Ranarion said:
But isn't that the anchoring Carol Kaye says thats bad? When I play with a pick my palm don't touches the strings and it seems to be a much more stressful handposition when I try to mute the strings with my palm. Most of the time the muting isn't a problem because I can mute unplayed strings with my left hand.
Click to expand...

I'm no expert -- I'm trying to learn to do all this stuff myself -- but I know what Carol says: "The bottom of your thumb muscle should graze on the string just below the one you're playing." (This particular quote is from Tip #9 on her web site, but she says it in lots of other places too.) I assume that by "below" she means what others would call "above" (as in farther from the floor), e.g., the E string when you're playing the A string. Anyway, my understanding is that this would serve to mute the string "below" the one you're playing, and any muting of other strings would be done with the left hand. In a sense, this would be analogous to using the "floating thumb" technique when playing fingerstyle.
 
#448
I've been using Carol's method ever since I picked up her first instruction book for electric bass. Still have it, and still refer to it.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what is the main difference for me playing with a pick vs. fingers, so I developed a little exercise that's fun and challenging. If you think about the properly held and played pick, you are able to create the attack envelope of the note by striking the string from the top. In finger-style, the attack envelope begins by striking from the bottom to the top. So here's where the little exercise comes in...try playing your normal practice scales, warm-ups, etc. using all Upstrokes with your pick, to emulate the attack of a finger. When I first started doing it, I couldn't stop playing alternate notes somewhere in the passage. It's deceptively difficult, but a fun exercise.

BTW - don't play the above until it hurts! It's just another little method to develop a more thoughtful pick approach.

Thanks Jimmy for advocating Carol's method - it was an essential piece of training for my early development. Also, she has a method of tapping her foot that it quite interesting as well. I recommend it!

Cheers,

-g
 
#449
Road Hat said:
I've been thinking a lot lately about what is the main difference for me playing with a pick vs. fingers, so I developed a little exercise that's fun and challenging.
Click to expand...

I've been thinking about the differences and similarities too, as I work on developing pickstyle after having played exclusively fingerstyle for the dozen or so years I've been playing. The thing I've been focusing on recently is the parallel between alternating downstrokes and upstrokes with a pick and alternating fingers when playing without a pick. With a pick I'm finding it natural and easy to maintain strict alternation of upstrokes and downstrokes. Going back and forth between pickstyle and fingerstyle, playing the same passages and riffs, has led me to the disconcerting discovery that when playing fingerstyle I've been doing a lot more "raking" than I ever realized. Now, I don't want to dredge up the long-running debate about whether raking is a universally terrible thing versus a matter of preference, but I do know that in my case my inconsistency in sometimes raking and sometimes not is definitely causing me some problems. So now I'm trying to work on my alternate fingering when practicing fingerstyle, and I'm finding that if I practice a passage pickstyle first, with consistent alternation of strokes, it is easier for me to focus on maintaining alternate plucking when I switch to fingerstyle. It never occurred to me that learning to play pickstyle might wind up helping me improve my fingerstyle, but it seems like it might.
 
#451
Interesting thread. I hardly ever use a pick, yet never seem to have a problem with it as I was a guitar player first. But some things just sound better and are easier for me to execute with a pick. Rapid 8ths, 16ths, or triplets on the same string for example, are much easier for me to do using a pick and alternating down/up than using 2 or 3 fingers.
But I guess I dont do enough of that to develop any injury. For the music I play its usually only 1 or 2 songs a set where I would pull out a pick anyway.
I think Im pretty ok w height of the instr. I dont sling low, neither do I play up on my chest. I prefer the old same sitting as standing rule pretty much, maybe just a hair lower but not hung low by any means. I do prefer a thicker pick, at least Fender Heavy thick if not thicker is optimal for me. I hardly ever pick by the bridge either, seems too much work, but I have been guilty on occasion in the middle of a tune if I wasnt cutting thru.
Never gave much thought about how I mute. A combination of both hands I'm guessing is how I do it.
Still I plan to study this and see if I can get the hang of it.
 
#452
Ranarion said:
But isn't that the anchoring Carol Kaye says thats bad? When I play with a pick my palm don't touches the strings and it seems to be a much more stressful handposition when I try to mute the strings with my palm. Most of the time the muting isn't a problem because I can mute unplayed strings with my left hand. The problem is when I have to play open strings e.g. in Seek & Destroy:

Code: 
G|---------------------------------5---|
D|-----5h7------5h7-----------5------7-|
A|-0-0-----0-00-----0--0-8-77---77-----|
E|-------------------------------------|

or

Code: 
G|------------------|-----------------|
D|------------------|-----------------| 
A|------------------|---------7-5-----|
E|-0-0-0-0-3-5-3-5\-|-0-0-0-0-----7-6-|
Click to expand...


Its not bad..... my hand is just futher back and sits on the bridge.
Remember Carols original writing come from a time when string technology and basses had little options.
Everything she has written about pick use is great advice, but it is advice.
Look again at what i am using, my hand is free it is not fixed, the motion does not come from the shoulder, the pick is held lightly, the thumb does not action the motion, the forearm to wrist is straight, up stroke amd down strokes etc, it is all there.... but i play at the bridge rather than the neck, and my string choice reflects that.
The Rotosound Funkmasters are light low tension strings, so playing at the bridge is fine with them, probley less tension than Carol had in her day playing at the neck. Extra muting comes from the fretting hand when needed when the use is fast, so its a combination of both depending on the situation, it works for slow or fast play.

I have used it as a method for over 40 years and it was based on Carols original articles i read in the 70s.....But times have changed any we understand more about injurys and playing related injuries, techniques, we have better technology helping us out, such as the many string options we can use. :)
 
#453
I don't buy into one right way for much of anything.

I'm a pick only player. Always have been and always will be.

If I played only like CK says to that would be limiting my arsenal in a big way. Different approaches are required to do different things. Sometimes I anchor my pick hand and palm mute and sometimes it's all in the elbow and I'm muting left handed. I have four different sweet spots I like to pick at depending on how I want it to sound and each spot has its own requirements as to what my hands are doing. Often I'm switching back and forth between various techniques in a song. I just do what works.

One thing about it is I have never had any pain from playing bass other than over practicing and making my fingertips blister. I sling my bass pretty low but comfortable and whatever techniques I'm using I make sure I am loose and in a comfortable position.

Cheers!

MJW
 
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#455
JimmyM said:
Well like I said before in this thread, I never had a single day of pain playing with a pick till I turned 40.
Click to expand...

I have to admit it is a scary thought to think that something I find easy one day could start causing me severe pain the next.

Getting old sucks.

I do work out and stay in shape, hopefully that will help. I recently went through a bulging disc deal in my back that was the worst pain I ever felt and a real wake up call. Since then I lost 25 pounds and started working out and I feel much stronger and overall in better shape. I'm 46 so I need to watch this stuff rather closely.

Cheers!

MJW
 
#456
deathsdj said:
I don't buy into one right way for much of anything.

I'm a pick only player. Always have been and always will be.

If I played only like CK says to that would be limiting my arsenal in a big way. Different approaches are required to do different things. Sometimes I anchor my pick hand and palm mute and sometimes it's all in the elbow and I'm muting left handed. I have four different sweet spots I like to pick at depending on how I want it to sound and each spot has its own requirements as to what my hands are doing. Often I'm switching back and forth between various techniques in a song. I just do what works.

One thing about it is I have never had any pain from playing bass other than over practicing and making my fingertips blister. I sling my bass pretty low but comfortable and whatever techniques I'm using I make sure I am loose and in a comfortable position.

Cheers!

MJW
Click to expand...

So long as you are comfortable with what you do is the main point. There is the right way, the wrong way, and "my way". players often cite "my way", "my style" "my sound" etc just as you buy in to your way.

You say it limits your arsenal, but that is a common complaint from players that try it, "it limits them" in some way.
Well of course it will limit them as they have not worked on developing it, they are comparing like for like, but one they have spend years developing and one for a day or two (maybe a week or two if they are lucky).

In the end the player makes the decision about how they approach playing bass, but decisions made when they are young and fit, those decisions and parameters may not apply when older.
Playing injuries have a common way in how the present themselves.....they just do. Usually no warnings, (chances are there were warnings but a player does not recognise them or just ignores them) so one day all is well, next day it is not.

Carols method is a guide, work within its parameters and many players will find through time ( 25+ years) rather than limit their arsenal, it help prolong it. ;)
 
#457
I mainly have hand pains from computer usage!

I have to say, i haven't been playing as much bass as usual in the past two years (because i was trying to focus on piano an guitar for a while) and wow, my picking hand lost strength. I'll play an uptempo song and my hand will hurt after five minutes when i used to be able to go for hours. I'm trying to build back muscle strength. As for my technique, well, my last three fingers are unfolded on the strings for balance and also for when i want to use a finger (say for a chord or slap), i wouldn't say i anchor them on the strings though. A lot of the time they're more against the pickguard. But yeah playing close to the neck? I don't like the sound. I tend to go towards the bridge. I never play closer than maybe halfway to the neck.

The thing about thick picks.... i find it a lot easier on my hand to play with a thin one than a thick one. The thick resists to the string which puts pressure on my thumb to allow the pick to plow through,the thin bends some which makes it easier. I used to favor a 1.5mm to 2.0, but recently, i've been using guitar picks (i mean like 1.00 and under) and i don't hate it even if that doesn't work for everything. Changes the tone for sure though. But i don't like how the 2.0+ sound as much anymore.
 
#458
Milk said:
I mainly have hand pains from computer usage!

I have to say, i haven't been playing as much bass as usual in the past two years (because i was trying to focus on piano an guitar for a while) and wow, my picking hand lost strength. I'll play an uptempo song and my hand will hurt after five minutes when i used to be able to go for hours. I'm trying to build back muscle strength. As for my technique, well, my last three fingers are unfolded on the strings for balance and also for when i want to use a finger (say for a chord or slap), i wouldn't say i anchor them on the strings though. A lot of the time they're more against the pickguard. But yeah playing close to the neck? I don't like the sound. I tend to go towards the bridge. I never play closer than maybe halfway to the neck.
Click to expand...

Hard to tell without seeing you play, but the boldfaced words are probably the key to your pain. Extension of those fingers would definitely put unnatural strain on the hand.
 
#459
Hate to break it to you, but it's not lack of muscle strength that's causing your problems. Seems to me you're going out of your way to make it hurt. But you know, I have had a pretty dismal success rate of convincing people of it, and I'm sure you will be no exception. So all I'll say is I wish you well and hope you don't have pain when you pick because it sucks, and it doesn't have to be that way.
 

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