StudyBassers! How you pluck your strings has an impact on almost every note of every song that you'll ever play. So it's very important to get right. And, it's also one of the easiest places to develop bad habits. So, in this lesson we're going to talk about how to pluck the strings how to silence, or mute, the strings, and just how to get a great tone out of your plucking technique. A couple of quick things before we start: Your fingers are numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4. So, we don't number the thumb like you do on other instruments. And the second thing is you'll want to keep your fingernails trimmed fairly short. So some bass players they like the sound of the fingernail, but most people find that it gets in the way. A lot of technique is not what people expect. So, most people expect bass technique to be all about producing sound, but a lot of technique is really about preventing sound. On the bass we typically want one string at a time. If we don't have that, it creates a really muddy sound. So that sounds pretty awful, right? What we want is to clean that up and sound more like this... So how do we do that? Well, to stop a string from ringing out we need to touch it with a finger somehow. And, it can be a finger in either hand. So you'll see in the next lesson that both hands are involved in muting. So, on the way up the strings, the plucking hand is in charge of muting the strings. But, when you're descending the strings your fretting hand is going to be doing a lot of the muting work, too. So a big part of this lesson will be about developing a solid muting strategy. We'll be discussing the use of your thumb quite a bit. And, as you'll see the thumb is a big part of your overall muting strategy. Now many bass players they anchor their thumb on a pickup and then use their first two fingers to pluck the strings. But, now the location of your bass pickups might just choose where you pluck along the string. But, something to know is that where you pluck along the length of the string has an impact on the tone that you get. So plucking closer to the neck gives you a warmer, fuller tone, and then plucking closer to the bridge gives you a tighter, percussive tone. So in the beginning I suggest finding a place in the middle that gives you a good balanced tone between those two sounds. The most important part of this lesson is this: use your first two fingers to pluck the strings. And, it's very important that you develop a consistent alternation pattern. So you want to either go one-two-one-two, or two-one-two-one. It doesn't matter which one you start on, but you need to go back and forth as consistently as possible. So in the beginning it's going to seem much easier just to play with one finger. And, you can get away with that for a while but as songs and things that you play get more advanced and more complicated, You won't be able to keep up just with one finger and this is one of the worst habits to have to break. So, the sooner you get this down, the better. Now when you work on this I always recommend that you say your finger numbers out loud. So 1-2-1-2, or 2-1-2-1. Remember using two fingers is half the work of using one. Now let's break down how to actually pluck the strings with our fingers. So, the motion that you use is very, very important. What you want to do is use the end of your finger and roll across the top of the string. So what everyone wants to do in the beginning is they want to go from underneath and pull the string out. If you listen you can hear it has a very thin, weak sound. Whereas, when you roll across the top of the string... you get a much fuller, bass-ier tone. Now the follow-through motion of the plucking is really important, too. So just like it when you swing a bat, or tennis racket, or a golf club the you don't stop the motion when you hit the ball. So you carry that motion through. And, that gives you a much fuller, stronger tone that way. Now be careful not to pluck into your thumb. You want to pluck somewhere behind your thumb... so that you can properly follow-through. Now whenever there's a string below, you always want your plucking finger to land on that string. That's going to be a big part of muting the strings. So when this A-string is ringing out when i pluck the D, the follow-through landing on that A-string mutes it. So again, A...and then here D. So that motion is really critical for keeping everything really quiet. So if we don't do that again we end up with... we end up with too many strings ringing out. Now we'll cover later in the video how to mute every single string. When people go hear live music it's often so loud that people just imagine the players are just attacking the strings...that are plucking really, really hard. But they're not. So it's a very small sound here that your amplifier and the sound system then takes and makes big. So don't let that influence how hard you pluck the strings. What you want to do is pluck very lightly. So if you pluck too hard, it can make you sound out of tune, it will cause strings to buzz, it slows you down and wears you out, and worst of all it'll maybe lead to hand injuries. So the forceful repetition of plucking really really hard is often what leads to hand injuries. So that's the stress part of repetitive stress injury. So that's a danger for beginners especially when they practice without an amp because what they'll do is they'll pluck really really hard so that they can hear what notes they're playing. So you want to avoid doing that. So always use an amp, pluck very lightly, and let the amp do the work. So, your fingers are not the amplifier! So far we've talked a little bit about muting with the thumb and the follow-through plucking but let's go string-by-string and see how to mute everything. I'm going to show you several muting strategies, and then we'll talk about why you might choose one versus another. Now you mute the E-string with your thumb by gently sliding it down and touching it. So think of it like an on/off switch on/off on/off. It's a very, very subtle motion. So you should just hover a few millimeters above the string...and come down that way. So a lot of people want to put their thumb way up here but this is way too much movement and when things get faster it's not going to work. So rest your thumb on the face of the pickup, not on the top. Now be careful of don't push on the string either so you just lightly touch lightly rest on that E-string. Now whenever you play any other string... your thumb is just going to stay there. Now when you put the A-string nothing special really needs to happen so as long as your thumb is touching the E-string is going to keep it quiet, but for good tone you still want to do the follow-through pluck motion where you land on the string below. It's just a good habit to always have. Now when you pluck on the D-string, if I go from A and I pluck on the D...that follow-through motion, and landing on the A-string is what stops it. So if I go here...A...D... Or, A...D... We get the mute by the follow-through plucking. Now here's where it gets a little bit tricky when we go to the G, the top string, there's a problem. Our E will be muted with the thumb and our D-string will be muted by our follow-through plucking... But there's nothing to mute the A-string. So that pesky A-string is going to ring out all the time when you don't want to. So the solution in this muting strategy is to use your ring finger too lightly touch the A-string only when you're playing on the G. So that would look and sound like this so here's A and then I jump up I'm muting with the ring finger Again It's just a very subtle motion. It's very very graceful. Your finger is already right there you just drop it down. So to review...you'll mute the E with your thumb. When you play A, nothing has to happen. When you play D... the follow-through pluck mutes the A-string. And, finally, when you play the G... your ring finger is touching that A-string. So you'll you'll really see the importance of all of this muting when you start to skip between strings like going from the E to the D. If we don't mute with the thumb... it sounds very muddy and noisy. They both ring out ring out at the same time. So if I mute with the thumb, it clears it up. And then the same thing happens with A to G. Now another way to mute that pesky A-string is by using your thumb on two strings. A lot of bass players will do this. They rest their thumb on the A-string whenever they're playing higher on the G. So this way the back of my thumb is lightly touching the E-string and the end of my thumb is just resting gently on the A-string. And again you only need this when you're playing on the highest string. That's a good technique but I find that it's a little bit too much moving around when you're crossing the strings quite a bit. Whereas the ring finger is very subtle... very little moving around. Another popular approach to muting the strings is what's called floating thumb technique. In floating thumb technique you use your thumb to mute multiple strings and it just glides on the top of the strings. So if we're playing on the G... then our follow-through plucking is still muting the D-string. But our thumb is here muting the E and the A. And, if i go to the D-string... my thumb floats up and just mutes the E. And, if I go to the A-string my thumb can move out of the way. So this is a great technique if you have a five-string or a six-string bass or God help you more than that. It really helps you mute many strings all at the same time. Which meeting strategy is better? Well, there's not a right answer. Every player is different and it depends on the bass that you play so there are a lot of things that factor into it. I'm going to give you some advice if you're going to play a six-string bass or more strings then definitely go with the floating thumb technique. Because you're going to run out of fingers to mute all of the strings and doing this across so many strings is going to be just too much of a range of motion. So we want things to be a little bit more efficient. Now, if you play 4-string bass my preference is the ring finger muting technique so it's very graceful, it's very efficient. And, in a lot of styles, you're not even playing the G-string that often. So you won't even be using that ring thing very much. So that's a very efficient technique but the other technique of moving your thumb over to the E and A is equally good. Now if you play 5-string bass you have a number of possibilities. So you won't go wrong doing the floating thumb technique, but a lot of people might do some sort of hybrid of the first two techniques...where you mute the B- and the E-strings with your thumb, and then you mute the A-string with your ring finger. So it's going to be up to you. Play around with it. See what what seems comfortable and natural. The ring finger is not going to feel very natural at first probably, but it pays off working on it. but just decide, be consistent, and mute those strings. A common question I hear from students is do you always alternate your two fingers? Well as you progress you'll know when you can take shortcuts and when you shouldn't. But, in the beginning it's very important for you to develop that consistent habit of the two fingers back and forth. So it's just a hard hard habit to break doing one finger. As much as you can alternate. But, now there are times when using the same finger twice in a row might make sense. So, for example, if you're descending the strings and you're only playing one note on each string, one possibility is to drag, or rake, your finger... across the strings. Now some people will say, "No, you should still alternate pluck when you do that." And, other people say, "Well, no, you use the same finger because it's already on that string waiting to pluck." But, overall, the more you alternate your fingers, the less work you'll be doing. Another piece of advice that I like to give students is when you practice watch your plucking hand. Don't watch your fretting hand. So everybody's instinct is to watch this hand, but most of the things that go wrong in that hand will cause bad sound. If it sounded like that you would fix it because it doesn't sound good. But, in your plucking hand a lot of things won't sound bad, but they become bad habits. For example, just plucking with one finger... it doesn't sound bad when you do that. But, it'll be a problem later on. So, try to avoid the instinct of watching that hand and just listen to that hand ,and instead watch your plucking hand. We've covered a lot of fine details in this lesson, and I would not expect you to perfect it in just a week or two. So, what will happen is you'll learn a new song and you'll discover problems your technique and then you fix it. This is ongoing process. Now what you should do is come back to this lesson from time-to-time and see what you might have forgotten or what you might have missed. now if you're a beginner they're really important parts to focus on are the two-finger alternate plucking and the proper plucking motion to get a good tone out of your bass. The other things, like muting, they're going to fix themselves over time because it's going to bother you when you hear those extra strings ringing out. But, the two finger plucking doesn't bother you in the beginning and then the plucking motion might not bother you. So be very vigilant with those. On StudyBass you can find exercises to work on your plucking technique.
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