The Thumb
By Danny Mac
I’ve talked a lot about music in my mini-rants and of course on THE Rant, but I haven’t gotten too much into specific playing techniques I use, when I play guitar or bass. Tonight, I’m going to change all that and give you an inside look at one of them. It’s all about one appendage – the thumb.
When I first started playing bass, I was using a pick to pluck the strings. A year or so later, I began to use individual fingers, specifically the first two on my right hand, instead of a pick. This is the common method that many fingerstyle players use, although some use three, or four of their fingers. There is however, one that is overlooked by most, but a certain group of players do use that “fifth finger,” or what we call our thumb. I’ve always admired players that can utilize all of their fingers and their thumb to “thump” and pluck the strings. I also envied them because it seemed that I couldn’t “do what the brothers do.”
I tried and tried for years to learn that coveted slap bass technique. It sounded easy, but it took much more coordination than I was capable of at the time. I kept trying, and I was able a few years later to get the “pulling” part of the technique down, yet the thumb was always clumsy and didn’t quite sound right. Rather than having a syncopated groove, I sounded like someone who was trying to be a one-man band, after a few too many screwdrivers! At times, I was ready to give it up, resigning to the fact that I just couldn’t do it, no matter how I tried.
A few years later, I go to a few gigs of a local jazz-fusion quartet, and watch the bass player intently. I start to see what he’s doing, and how he’s pulling it off. I go home and try it, once again only to find that it’s much more difficult than I thought it to be. Pretty soon, I start to practice it everywhere, pretending I’ve got a bass in my hand when I’m holding something, even gripping the handle on a shopping cart at the grocery store. The struggle continues, until one day…I have an epiphany.
Something “clicks” on in my head, and I have immediate insight! “Oh, I get it! I’m not moving in the right direction! I have to graze the strings back and forth, not up and down!” I pick up my bass, and look down at my thumb. It looks different now; it appeared to say, “I’m ready. Let’s do this.” I try the technique again very slowly, watching my thumb, eventually getting the rest of my fingers to snap or pop the other strings. In just a few minutes, I get that groove I’ve been looking desperately for in the past decade or so. That poor syncopation becomes a danceable beat, and a smile is now upon my face.
Up until this point, I envied those who were able to do this, thinking that it just wasn’t within my reach. I looked at the players that I held upon an unreachable pedestal; suddenly, those pedestals weren’t so high now. I found myself being able to do those Victor Wooten triplets that looked damned near impossible for so many years. I watched Bill “the Buddha” Dickens, and thought to myself, “Yeah, I can do this!”
I remembered when I was pretty sure that “I’ll never learn to play fretless bass. It’s just too hard. It looks impossible.” That was five years ago. Today, I feel my playing improves with every chance I get to play. Just like my life
That’s your mini-rant, and I’m Danny Mac, on LG73, Vancouver’s Best Music Mix!