Sup all dudes and dudettes. Ive been playin guitar for about 5 months or so, and decided that bass is more my style (less chords, easier to get into a band). Ive been havin a few problems playing my brand new ibanez gsr200. Though i remain focused, i have problems keeping the strings from squeaking due to the huge frets compared to a regular guitar. Also, i cant figure out exactly how to position my fingers, and pluck the strings. I know ive only been playin for like, a week, but i think the feel of playin bass will come a lot quicker if you guys helped me out.
Thanks,
Carley (im a guy)
You want to make sure you plucking hand wrist is straight, first of all. I know lots of bassists will have their wrist bent at a ninety degree angle, especially guys who wear their bass high, but it's a bad way to play and a great way to hurt yourself. I move around depending on what I'm doing. For slap, I float above the strings. When I play with my thumb, I either have my palm muting down by the bridge or near the strings higher up. For classical guitar-type fingerstyle, I use a position much like I would on the guitar, with my hand over the strings. For more bass type fingerstyle I'm usually a little closer to the strings, and my hand is not right over the strings, so my fingers reach forwards a little more to pluck. hand position is pretty flexible; as long as you keep your wrist straight and like the position you're okay. I my post a couple pictures to show what I do if I run across the camera.
I'ts something that you will become more and more used to after a while.
Just follow all of Paul Donnely's above advice, and just try out the various positions, and find one that your most comfortable with. Use this as your basic position, your foundation that you can go back to every time, after you've been playing a different style or whatever, go back to the foundation position.
Just a practcical note, are you practicing standing up or sitting down? I recomend that you practice standing up, firstly becuase thats how you'll always play in a band, and secondly because you havce to bend your wrist and everything to get into the right position, and I for one find playing bass sitting down actually quite painful.
Peter
I'd like to say that I agree with these two, but the wrist being bent is not neccessarily bad. When I play, my right hand has the thumb against the pickguard and pinky and ring finger curled back, using the sides of my pointer and middle finger to pluck the strings. It gets an intresting tone out of your bass. It has alot of punch, but still keeps the high-end if thats what you are after.
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