After starting the course and playing bass for about a bit more than a month, I noticed increased pain in my fretting thumb, so I stopped and consulted some professionals about it. It wasn’t anything severe, and I was given a thumb splint and I stopped playing as ordered to rest. And the pain did lessen.
Slowly starting bass now again after 3 months, but I have the feeling the pain does comes back. Though while I thought at the beginning everything might have started with me pressing my thumb too much on the neck and probably rushing too much through the course without proper rests, I recently tried practising without putting my thumb on the neck. Like holding it away from it or letting it be a bit next to the other fingers.
Though I noticed the pain again - which makes me wondering if the pain originally came from too much tension in my joints in general?
Did any of you have the same experience? Or ideas on how to reduce tension? Like exercising/massages or holding my hand/bass differently? Or see if tension really is the reason?
I dont experience any lasting thumb pain, although i am struggling with the resting position. Its either relaxed over the top or seems to be pressing hard in to the back.
I would think you are almost certainly fretting too hard. A very common thing at the start.
Plenty of people here will tell you that you should be able to fret without your thumb even touching the back of the neck, but maybe that’s a bit extreme for day to day playing.
I would strongly recommend you try plugging away at a single note easing your fretting finger pressure as you go until you get fret buzz then apply a touch more pressure until the buzz goes away. That’s as much pressure as you need and I think you’ll find it will be a lot less pressure than you have been normally applying when playing.
Then keep repeating that, maybe at the start of each practice session, until it is natural.
Though if I lift a finger even a bit, I already get fret buzz. Or rather I have to fret harder to get no buzz.
Or is it that I also could have not the correct position yet? Like I notice the difference in placing my fingers, just not yet used to the right spot when trying to fret faster. And maybe therefore fret too hard?
Are you fretting in the middle of the gap between frets or right up against the fret itself? You want to be doing the latter. The farther from the fret that you are the more buzz you’ll get. (apologies if you know all this already!)
If you’re having to fret really hard (maybe you’re not) to avoid buzz then maybe your set up might want looking at.
Practice fretting right on top of the fret instead of in the space between frets.
The closer you are to being right on the fret the less you need to move the string and the less force it takes to push the string down and hold it there solidly.
Fretting right on the fret will teach you to use less force. If you touch the fret, the string stops and no amount of extra force will move it any further.
Is your bass set up properly? If you have high action that would do it too.
Your relationship with the fretting pressure will last a lifetime of playing, especially bass because most of the note articulations live right there in-between fully fretted note, open string, sliding, hammer on, muted notes, ghost notes, burp/ fart, and harmonics.
It’s not an on or off thing. It’s worth taking the time and really learn how to produce the note, in a perfect world a fretted note should only be played with enough finger pressure to make the full tone no more no less then from there it’s just the matter of micro pressure adjustment to produce other tone.
Here’s some playing example. It has everything from open string, harmonic, ghost notes, slides. very little finger pressure.
yeah, I already know that and aim for the fret itself, but thanks for mentioning it again! though sometimes it feels as if I’m just slightly off, I already get buzz with the same pressure.
so, yeah, like you and @Al1885 said, I should probably also look into the bass setup.
the music store I bought it from made a setup, but maybe it’s just not the right one for me? will probably look at it at the weekend!
I noticed not so much pain but soreness in mine but I was doing the noob thing and pressing too hard. It’s like Josh says, our strumming hand/arm is holding or pushing back against our fretting hand so our thumb is essentially just to stabilize our hand. Just try to focus on not pressing so hard and you’ll be fine.
