Plucking: One Finger per String

When doing this, where do you put the pinky? With this style I’ll usually anchor it on the g string, but it feels wrong.

For anyone still curious, an update:

I decided to go, not back to Square 1 but maybe Square 1 1/2. I proceeded with the lessons, trying hard to only ever do alternate plucking. With a challenging piece that got pretty frustrating sometimes, but I kept at it, and kept doing the lessons.

Just finished Module 9, and to my immense surprise, this is starting to feel natural. I still have a bit of trouble muting sometimes, and I sometimes catch myself using an extra finger—but those times are getting rarer. So thanks again to all, this unlearning/relearning thing has been pretty challenging, but I think the hardest part is behind me. Now to chug chug chug forward.

Robert

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Excellent @bobtoombs Robert!

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Strange as it may seem, I envy you for your ability to pluck the way you described. Don’t get me wrong: I totally agree with all of those who advised you to learn the “regular” alternate plucking, which I have found the most natural way of playing the bass from the very first moment I took the instrument in my hands. However, almost every plucking technique has been evoked in this thread. As I see, there are specific musical contexts for each of them justifying their use in order to obtain a desirable sound effect. It means that the more you master different plucking techniques, the more your musical language is enriched. Of course, bad habits shouldn’t govern (and limit) our playing, but it seems more interesting to expand our skills than simply replacing an acquired technique with another by “unlearning” it. @Sully3169 mentioned raking. It’s a quite obvious technique but (since I saw Ariane Cap urging her students in one of her videos to resist to the temptation of raking) I always try to play such passages with and without raking as well - in order to develop consciousness and control of my finger movement as well as to evaluate the musical difference between the resulting sounds.
I found the remarks of @y.farkash quite noteworthy. I think that your original technique is “legitimate”. Now that you have trained yourself to alternate finger plucking, you don’t have to forget the old one, just to find the best usage of it. :slight_smile:

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Hate to necro an old thread, but I feel like people generally don’t really understand the why of finger per string and are making uninformed comments.

Finger per string is not a good style for 4 string, it’s slower than alternating for no real benefit. It starts to pull ahead conditionally with 5 string and is just better for 6 string if you spend the time to get good at it. Finger per string eliminates muting problems entirely which is a real issue with the 6, and it’s very natural to pair with slap since you can rest your thumb on the E and mute the B with the meaty base of your thumb and there’s zero reset between slaps and regular plucks. On the 6 some of the speed you lose on single string lines (I mean, I guess, if you want you can still post up and 2/3 finger alternate without too much movement, just another technique to practice) you make up for with being able to do stuff on multiple strings much faster, and if you grow your nails a bit and learn to flick the strings you can close the speed gap while still having a world of additional versatility (flick tone is sharp like a pick, that’s a plus for me).

Ultimately it comes down to knowing your instrument, knowing your body and knowing what type of music you want to play. If you wanna play rock classics written on a 4 stick with alternating, if you want to do crazy prog/jazz stuff on a 6, want to blow people’s minds and don’t mind having to practice a lot more because the technique is challenging, try something different.

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