I’ve lowered it since I took those photos. But I’m mostly playing seated at the moment.
Here’s a little snippet of how I’m getting on. I missed the string at 0:20
In your earlier post @BeerBaron you said to pick closer to the bridge, but I find myself naturally wanting to do it closer to the neck. I don’t have time now but tomorrow I’m going to try consciously picking closer to the bridge.
Edit: damn I’ve just realised the sync is really bad on this video. Not sure how that happened.
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^^^ this
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Exactly. There’s just different muting techniques, not really more.
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It’s fine to move around, it affects the tone just like moving your fingers around does. I don’t religiously stay in one spot at all. But @BeerBaron is right in that it’s easier to pick closer to the bridge.
In terms of muting, you can get a lot of mileage out of the side of your picking hand below the pinky; it works just like palm muting on guitar. Just rest it on the E and A string when you aren’t playing them.
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I watched your video, and I decided to take video to compare what I do compared to you.
…and I figured out where and why you are having issues: You are trying to hold your arm in the same position on the bass as you would playing finger style - anchoring on the body in the same point. I tried to do that… and my technique fell apart.
I anchor with my arm at a totally different angle. I bring my elbow way back, and rest my forearm on the back of the bass body, sort of over the back of the bridge. I’ve got more control. I use less energy. Muting is soooo much easier.
(Double edit: The camera program on my laptop was being stupid. So I re-filmed on my phone. Here you go…)
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This makes a hell of a lot of sense, thank you so much for this.
I can see that I’m defaulting to my muscle memory. I’ve also realised that when I play with fingers while sitting, I keep my elbow quite far back, leaving my wrist almost at 90 degrees. So with a pick, my default is to move the elbow back.
Also I love the effort to get D’Angelo in shot.
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I’ve been playing the same way as @THRILLHO. Your vid has helped me out quite a bit as well. Thanks!
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This is what I love about this community. @THRILLHO talks about issues he is having, and instead of just getting “do this”, we get someone making a video going “here’s how you’re doing it now, but try doing it like this” with a demonstration.
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I play with both fingers and pick depending on the song and my mood.
some songs are best with a pick (KISS) others fingers (Iron Maiden)
Some can go either way regardless of how they were played originally (Pink Floyd and Sabbath)
Having said that I have an embarrassing number of picks lying around the house for a bass player.
my current favourite though is these:
I like the thickness and the point, so much so that I cut my other green Dunlops to match when I couldn’t get another pack
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Glad to hear. I think making this position adjustment will really unlock things for you.
You’ve kind of been playing on hard mode with the angle you were holding things at. You were doing remarkably well for how much you were handicapping yourself. I think this will make things work much better for you.
Seriously. I was trying it last night and suddenly I found alt picking to be so much easier.
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I’m moving my way through The Beatles catalogue and I’ve come to Help, and I need some help.
This is the first song where there is a short note on one string before a longer note on another (see below)
I’m trying to figure out the best order of up and down strokes. I prefer picking “outside” the strings, so up on the D string and down on the A string.
You could also just pick in the direction of the next string, so all up on the first bar and all down on the second. Like raking with your fingers. But that makes timing more difficult I think.
Or you could pick “inside” the strings, so down on the D and up on the A. This one feels the worst.
I’d either do it all downstrokes…
or I’d do it sort of raking: Down on every downbeat, then in the direction I’m going to end up moving. (Down-Up-Up - Down-Down-Down - Down-Up-Up)
Great Video, I was doing wrong too! looking back at music videos, I can’t believe I never caught it, I was always looking atthe fret hand!