Part 2: Four and Three Finger Plucking Exercises For Bass

By request, a quick tutorial on how to begin intergrating your thumb and ring finger into your bass guitar plucking technique. Use of a playing ramp and metronome is discussed as well.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• bass
• guitar
• four
• fingers
• picking
• plucking
• technique
• lesson
• ramp
• metronome
• bryan
• r.
• tyler
• elrick
• talkbass
• matthew
• garrison

[mdzk81]

very nice video; may I suggest to try the european classical guitar fingering for tremolo, it's thumb, ring, middle, index and so on, it should feel comfortable and in my opinion it delivers a different sound; an extra fingering is one (of tons!) used in flamenco styles T, i, r, m, i.. just curious to know what do you think about it, bye :D

[bryanrtyler]

I'm for whatever works and is comfortable for you. I personally find it easier to play TIMR- it also helps me avoid the natural "galloping" sound I get when playing RMI- but the more tools you have in your toolbelt, the better. I do sometimes use just RMI without my thumb when I do want that triplet, galloping sound.

[OlafErikson]

First off, thanks for a very helpful video. Next, I can pluck with my ring, middle, and index finger, but my thumb is thoroughly dysfunctional. It's just plain unwieldy, and without anything to anchor my hand, I have a whole lot of awkward motion. What would you suggest to remedy this?

[bryanrtyler]

I would suggest learning the floating thumb technique first (see Todd Johnson's clips). It's a good starting point to using your shoulder to hold your arm's weight instead of needing an anchor, and will get your thumb used to moving around the strings. Once it's used to moving about for muting rather than as an anchor, plucking with it will become much more natural. I'm lucky in that I learned to pluck with my thumb very early on, but getting used to having no anchor can take some time.

[dillinjaesc]

impressive. how many hours a day did it take you to get that good?

keep it up

[bryanrtyler]

I'm not sure- I'd try to get it worked into all of my practices as much as possible. Your ring finger can get sore at first though, so don't do too too much early on.

[capocchiate]

show your face

[BossBassist]

man around 3:30 and on i love that little line...you have a great sense of rhythm...idk how you do it...i try and it just seems i cant get down a good rythm like that idk your great

[BlueMac11]

This helped me. Thanks. :)

[miklec666]

Great video! This has made my 3 finger picking so much quicker. Thanks very much.

[mfm2772]

Great job man! I really appreciate this too! I don't know what a ramp is but I'm sure I can ask around because I definitely wanna be able to get some of those things down that you did. Thanks so much again!

[bryanrtyler]

No problem- it is a bit disconcerting seeing the audible counting not matching up with my fingers :D I'd email you the original in-sync vids from my PC if they didn't add up to 200MB :)

[UK2AK]

I love it, Bryan. I WISH YouTube would fix itself so that audio and video were in better sync though. Still, this is helpful and great stuff.

Thanks for taking the trouble. Seriously, thanks.