PICKING - MY PICKING STYLE AND TECHNIQUE. Correct way of picking: carolkaye/www/education/tips51.htm Most of the recordings/hits cut in Hollywood studios in the 1960s (about 85-90%) were done with a pick (on flatwound strings), whether it was by me or other bass players. Using a hard pick and picking close to the end of the neck with a flat-wrist is the correct technique. This is all pretty easy if you follow the instructions, and just take a break from it all sometimes. Dont fall into a rut of analyzing, just let your hand fall on the downbeats for awhile - you build your prowess up very quickly and be sure to pat your foot while picking exactly the same ways: Keep WRIST FLAT! Pick at the end of the neck (never near bridges): down on the downbeats and up on the upbeats. Guitarists are increasingly discovering these picks and seem to love to use them for guitar also as I do too. Theyre extra hard but aside from that, get the nice deep rich blues and jazz sounds, easy to maneuver with on guitar. It doesnt really matter what pickstrokes IMO you use on guitar like it does on elec. bass,but it does help to keep the wrist low for easy efficiency, speed and power when picking. So yes, some of the bass technique of picking works well for speed/efficiency on guitar also and certainly playing with the beat, down on downbeats, and up on upbeats does help with accuracy and the feel . Many of the top guitar players use my picks and low right wrist when picking. --------------------------------------------------------- First of all, if you click on this, youll see the picture of *where* I pick (close to the end of the neck) and how Im holding the pick the low wrist and all that: carolkaye/www/education/tips51.htm go about 1/4th down the page and youll see the picture. And following is my pick technique from a data attachment I send out to interested people around the world: Today, its not necessary to play elec. bass with a pick. Ive always said that except for in the late 60s or early 70s, when the studios and record companies insisted their studio bass players to play with the pick (they were asked for the Carol Kaye sound). Most of the recordings that came out of Hollywood during the 1960s were recorded with a pick on the elec. bass whether it was by myself or others. Normally even today in the studios, you really dont have to use the pick, altho its popularity is gaining ground again. If you look at where your thumb is on your hand, next to the index finger, then you see the logic to grasp the pick between your thumb and index finger for the most natural strength and flexibility. Some guitar players will naturally use any kind of pick and grasp it with more than just the thumb and index fingers as they probably havent been taking any lessons from a teacher and dont know the correct way to hold the pick for proper good execution. And most elec. bass teachers have no idea to hold the hard pick correctly either, not having the amount of live playing, studio, and teaching experiences with the pick, let alone the best kind of pick to use for power-sounding positive action bass notes. The pick should be held on the SIDE of your index finger. Youll have the fastest and strongest way to play the elec. bass with the pick if you hold it right. No, you dont strum chords on the bass, but you do play much harder than you ever do on the guitar. So using the pick in the way Ill describe is your best bet for not only a great sound on bass, but a positive fast SURE way of easy clean accurate perfect-rhythmical playing. Using the correct technique not only keeps your right shoulder less tense (and not sticking up in the air), but makes it seem effortless - just a little practice (2-3 weeks) and youve got this valuable technique for a lifetime of fun-playing without getting tired while you get your power-sounds, and effortlessly play the intricate 16-notes with every note sounding out without missing the strings. Effortless, efficient, fast, fun, and without using much energy - thats the payoff by doing it right. Next (if you are right-handed), you want to start patting your left foot and right hand together while holding the pick in your right hand. Both your right hand and your left foot go down and up at the same time, you start picking with the beat - down on the downbeats and up on the upbeats - its just the opposite for lefties. Now, start playing down on one note, over and over, down on the quarter notes of the rhythm (down-beats) to get the hang of playing down on the down beats, and finally add the up on the up beats - down-up-down-up the way your left foot is patting. This is the way to get the most speed, metrical accuracy, and best ease of playing altho there might be a few times when you pick ALL down in spots for accentuating somewhat but usually its all down on the downbeats and up on the upbeats with your right wrist down and your right hand sort of hopping over a string to play on other strings.....theres more about this technique. Make sure your thumb is curved inward towards your hand while holding the pick, and STATIONARY (dont move that thumb knuckle!) -- all action comes from the FLAT WRIST (just a little forearm motion is OK, but not much). Make sure the forearm does NOT pull backward and forward. Just a little up and down motion (toward the floor) will be OK, with 95% or more motion coming from the flat wrist. Its important that you FEEL where the down beats and up beats are with the pick in your hand before you attempt to play the bass. When I was teaching a lot of working musician-students in the early 70s (Jim Hughart, John Clayton, Dave Hungate, Mike Porcaro, Tony Sales, Reinie Press, Arnie Moore, Alf Clausen, Pat Smith, Whitey Hogan, Frank Carroll, Abe Luboff, Pete Vescovo, Tom Winkler, Trey Thompson, Dave Edelstein, Harvey Newmark, Luther Hughes, Mike Schoebelen, Dave Edelman, etc.), they would keep the pick in their right hand while flying to their gigs/concerts, and practice beating their right hand pick in hand to music on the earphones the whole flight. This is GOOD practice. Maybe they got funny looks from the stewardess, but the principle works. Make sure that you find a comfortable place to rest your right arm FLAT on the bass somewhere. Its much different for longer-armed people than shorter-armed people. Just be sure your right hand winds up so that you pick no closer than an inch or so to the base of the neck with your arm resting on the bass, letting the wrist do all the action. Never pick really close to the bridge. Its simply too hard to play there as you get the great sounds close to the end of the neck, not near the bridges where the strings are really stiff. Youll get bad sounds next to the bridges, as well as you could hurt yourself from this wrong area to pick in. Now, with your right hand and wrist resting FLAT (not up in the air) -- as you play a note, your right thumb muscle will be sitting barely on top of another string - your thumb muscle will graze (feel) the string its sitting on which is the string next to the one youre playing on. When playing on the E string (on a 4-string bass), your thumb muscle will lift up and off when hitting the E string, as if theres a B string there. You learn to hop over a string when playing down and up pickstrokes, sometimes even in a circle motion of the right hand, but ALWAYS with the wrist FLAT. The power comes from the wrist so dont leave it up in the air where its not only useless, but a terrible way to play (no accuracy, no power, you lose all control of your picking that way). Your wrist needs to be DOWN right on the strings to get power - remember, 95% of the motion comes from the wrist. Now, with your foot patting, play down-beat notes on C, letting your right hand play relaxed with the fingers curled in slightly, not tightly at all, with that pinkie poking up in the air slightly, and the other side of your right hand (thumb muscle) DOWN grazing on the strings - all action remember, comes from that strong wrist, held in a relaxed manner with all the fingers slightly curled in, so youre not waving a lot of weight in the air to slow you down. Hold that pinkie UP a little! Dont let the pinkie sit on the bass as some ignorant players try to do....keep it UP in the air, the only thing touching is the bottom of the thumb muscle - thats your anchor for the right hand (not your pinkie doing something wrong like laying down....keep the right hand slightly cocked so the pinkie can be up some. You want to use gravity to let the weight of your hand play the down beats, not a push feel at all, but let your hand FALL on the down beats and work on the upbeats. You can play harder later, keep the action of the down beats light right now to get the feel of using the pick just sort of fall on down beats first to grasp the idea of using the gravity let your right hand FALL on the notes every note, foot patting at the same time. Then play your 8th notes, down and up beats with down and up pickstrokes. In practicing the upstrokes on the upbeats, theres a little muscle just above the pinkie side of the wrist which will get a workout for the first time. It might be a little sore for about 2 days and then go AWAY forever. This is the ONLY time you will have a little soreness at any place, using that little muscle when you play upbeats which will be a little sore for 2 days and youll never feel it again. Once you get the hang of the right hand falling on the down beats (youll automatically play harder on the downbeats the more you play, dont worry about that right now), and picking up on the up beats, then vary the pattern (still one note) on C, go to down-up up-down-up up-down-up, up-down-up, up-down-up etc. playing on the up beat then down beat then up beat again in the pattern (an 8th rest between the patterns to keep the tempo the same). Then do a shuffle blues line of R R 8 8 b7 b7 5 5 (best key is C at first then try it in G), on your strings, heeding the down beat and up-beat pickstroking. Take your time with this, its important to have patience. If you get frustrated, take a break, come back later to try again. Notice how your right hand lifts slightly and hops over the strings, from the wrist. The wrist is ALWAYS held FLAT almost on the strings, with the forearm maybe moving ever so slightly (less is better). Feel the power of the natural strength in your flat wrist! The minute you lift that flat wrist up in an arch, you absolustely LOSE power, dont do it. Do it right, keep that wrist flat! Between the grasp of the thumb and the index finger (with the thumb curved in toward the index finger) you have the most pick on the strings this way. Be sure to use a HARD pick, (see my picks for sale in CATALOG - Accessories, theyre the finest picks and at reasonable prices too), and the relaxed flat wrist. With this great technique, you have a ton of power there. Its the strongest, easiest, most accurate, fastest, most powerful, and most relaxed way to really pound that bass - you can play hard all day and night and never get tired while your playing is solid and ballsy. In the 1960s studio work, I used to keep my strings pretty high (always a Fender Precision back then, with medium flats), as Id quickly bottom them out, if I didnt. I loved to play hard and the pickups and strings werent as well-made back then as they are now....The hardness I was able to play with a pick, 12-16 hours a day was easy for years (lack of sleep tho was tough) and I never get tired of playing and creating a ton of funky 16th patterns most of the time too. The intensity for recording on a record (and even a TV film and movie) means you need to play with proper easy clean technique and STRONG HARD PLAYING. Recording requires much harder playing than any live gig Ive played, which is why I kept my strings very high back in those 60s days, something I dont do nowadays - I dont have to. But even today, my strings are higher than most bass players. The pickups and strings simply werent made well back then, and the only way to get a good sound, was #1, put a shim in the neck for better neck action, #2, pull the bridge back some, and #3 raise the strings so you could hit them harder for optimal sounds...You dont have to do that today with such better-built basses with better pickups and strings tho its smart to have strings up high a little so you get more of the real bass playing action - its a bass, not a guitar. Leo Fender put my picking on the oscilloscope around 1981 (he was curious), and he said that my way of picking was the hottest hed ever seen. The natural way I played was way above the the vip finger players hed also put on the scope. He was amazed at how high and fast it peaked, he had never seen that before. So the impact of the pick (whether you use highs mids or lows, I only turned the treble about 1/4 on the bass) was the strongest, plus with the highs turned down on the bass and the amp (it was different in those days, I could easily also get the low-end fingers sounds, no problem. In recording back then, you had to play and get your sounds according to what the arranger and/or the producer wanted -- from very high clicky Mission Impossible to very low Across 110th St. Motown things, where people swear up and down Im playing with fingers. You change youir settings just a little bit and voila, you have a wide range of sounds for all styles of music. You can hear this difference on my CD Carol Kaye: Bass and demonstrations of my bass playing are on a few filmed interviews shown on TV sometimes. You can also hear all the different soundclip sounds in library on my web site (and home-page too). For the 8/8 (doubletime feel), simply double up on the pickstrokes, its the same feel thing, but now you have 8 beats to the bar instead of 4, the technique works just fine. You can pat your foot to 8/8 at first to get the feeling of the strokes, and later only to 4/4. For triplets, its down-up-up to about 126 (quarter note triplets) in tempo, then use the down-up-down up-down-up method of tremolo type picking for 128 and faster tempi. When that fast, its simply a tremolo thing then. The way to practice triplets (to get the accuracy and feel of the natural triplets playing with the pick) is to play very HARD on the downbeats and VERY LIGHT on the 2 up beats, you start getting the feel of them then, and then later on harden up on all notes. Practice at very slow tempos at first - remember to pat your foot. When I played here and there at the last NAMM Trade Show, many former slappers were wanting to play with a pick, as they saw the logic and speed plus the easy powerful fast notes you can play with a good hard pick. The sound is amazing, plus the metric clean speed is there for all the 16ths without any tiredness or work, you can play that way all day long. Im not advocating funk with a pick. It depends on your personal taste, but once exposed to the way I play, it seems that everyone wants to use the pick then. They hear the great bass sounds possible with playing with a pick. No I dont get a pickysound normally - only when they ask for it. The pick helps to define the bass sound naturally too in recording and when you play 16th-notes, theyre so precise that much of any pick impact sound is coordinated with the drum beats too - only the notes sound. Remember the softer the pick (the worse picks to use are soft picks), the more youre going to have a bad picky scrachy sound, especially with thicker roundwound strings and youll be working 2-3-4x as hard to get any decent sound with a medium or softer pick....you have to use the extra-heavy picks I use to get the right power sounds. Never use a felt pick, those are for ukes. Flatwound strings are really the only strings to use with the pick, and they also sound better, and last longer - you heard those Hollywood hits all played on flatwound strings in the 1960s. You can get away with using a HARD pick temporarily on roundwounds if they are tightly wound, and not gargantuan strings but you have to work harder at it, and they chew up your picks too. The kind of pick you use is important, plus the shape (teardrop I find is the best, less pick to wave in the air, fastest, cleanest sounds, fits most hands, even the biggest hands). If a pick starts slipping in your hand, youre simply holding the pick too tightly, and building up sweat.... keep the hand relaxed. Your thumb and index finger will grasp at the right moment when you hit the note, you dont have to over-do holding the pick tightly, keep it loose. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Sometimes you need to slow it down and pick very lightly, just letting your right hand sort of fall on the down-strokes. Are you patting your left foot on the down and up-beats too? Your left foot should be going down and up the way your right hand is with the pick held fairly snug but not held tightly in your hand. Is your right wrist flat? Not sticking up in the air? Is your pinkie part of your hand up a little and the other part, the bottom of your thumb muscle DOWN on the strings? If you sit and listen to music with the pick in your hand and pat your hand with it, youll feel the down and up-beats that way too, its good practice. Also when skipping strings with your pick, just make sure your right-hand is hopping over the string while keeping your wrist flat, dont let it come up. Make sure the motion is coming mainly from your flat wrist, not much from your arm at all (if anything). Use the weight of your hand and gravity mostly for the down-strokes at first, youll play harder later....getting the proper technique is most important at first. And is the sound youre getting the sound you like to hear? If not, put a little more bottom on your bass (and your amp too), pick closer to the end of the neck (never next to the bridges). Make sure there is NO movement from your right thumb, it all (almost all, there might be a little from the arm) comes from the WRIST! Some amps have compression and EQ knobs...dont play with any false sounds. You dont need electronic sounds. If youre having some extra noises, extra overtones and undertones destroying your sound so youre not cutting through to the audience, make sure you have a muting of some sort on your bass..I use the doubled up piece of felt taped (with masking tape) on top of my strings, about 1-1/2 inches wide. This works, has always worked in studio work and works fine playing live too. You dont need to spend 1,000s of dollars of outboard gear to get great bass sounds....just an investment of .25 cents for some felt will do if you play with a pick (finger players use foam barely touching the strings, underneath the strings). Its not necessary these days to play with a pick at all, but if youre going to play with a pick, get it right and youll always have great dexterity, strength and fine sounds with it, always fine metrical (insider meter) perfect 16ths and great up-beats too. When you play, you want the best gear, best strings, best pickups, best amplifer and BEST PICKS. Im happy I can provide you with the picks here as well as the education, and access to the right strings and advice. Musicians need the best help they can get these days. No wonder we have people complaining about pick players out there with those kinds of flimsy awful picks being sold! No-one can get a great easy powerful dynamically-controlled great bass sound with them. And guitarists are no better off with their awful picks either. You need to have fine strings, good pickups, good instruments etc. but if you play all the good gear with lousy picks, youll still have a usually terrible sound...you need good picks in order to get efficient good sounds and easily play well. On the double-time feel patterns, 16th note patterns, you pat your foot 8/8 (8 beats to the bar) and pick accordingly...the 16ths would be down-up down-up and of course patting your foot double-time its easy then to find how to pick the notes in even the toughest 16th-note rhythmic patterns.... Getting the downs and ups in correct picking technique insures your 16-note clean notes so each note comes out with great sound and completely even with great metrical time...which is why the engineers all loved to see me on the record dates....they just stuck a mic in front of my amp, opened the pot and voila, the sounds I got and my picking did the rest and made their job easy to record me. Im not bragging just explaining....for those of you who dont know, I never wanted to do studio work in the first place, but it worked out so I could raise my kids and have enough money to take care of them properly plus, when you do studio work, youre away from the nightclubs etc....and playing all styles with some of the finest singers around, that sort of makes it all worthwhile. Anyway, in time youll be able to pick correctly and have this great technique, the ONLY picking technique that works well for playing the Elec. Bass. See the Bass DVD Course, the Music Reading DVD, and the Teaching, Playing and Hangin DVD for more on picking techniques in great depth. Also, theres pics in the middle page of Playing Tips in Education tab here too which shows the right-hand technique. ------------------------------------------------------ History of Picking on Hollywood recordings. Ray Pohlman, Rene Hall, and Arthur Wright were neck to neck, the very FIRST ones to record with a pick (1956). Listen to Rene Hall on bass with a pick on my Guitars 1965 CD in CATALOG. In 1963, when accidentally put on bass when someone didnt show, I popularized using the pick creating the funky 16th-note types of lines .... I began recording on elec. bass in the fall of 1963 when someone didnt show up at Capitol Records and they put a Fender Precision bass in my lap to play....this was my 5th year as a successful studio guitar player (after many years as a professional jazz guitarist). Others try to claim they were the first to pick on Hollywood recordings but this is NOT TRUE! There was one who wasnt even a part of our recording scene until about 1965-66 and he played terribly inept with a pick (a big pick he could barely control) with fingers on his instrument, a very ignorant technique. Others did a lot better with the pick playing simple styles: Buddy Clark, Larry Knechtel, Lyle Ritz, Bob West, and later on Chuck Berghofer, Joe Osborn, Jim Hughart, and Max Bennett (I taught these last 2) also etc.... from about 1965 on. As #1 call, from 1964 on I was fortunate to get the bulk of the bass calls on bass and on most of my record dates (about 90-95% of the dates) I was the only bass player on the record date. Previously, producers had 2-3 bassists on every date to get the sounds I could get on one bass with the proper picking technique, both low end round bass sounds which sound like fingers and the upper trebly pick sounds - I always had a wide range of sounds depending on the style of the tune, the producer (what sounds they wanted) and what the tune required (see my BIOGRAPHY list for more names of studio musicians).....I didnt mean to put other bass players out of work, it just happened that way. There are a couple or so studio musicians who do inflate their credits on their websites, mostly out of poor memory. Its a shame that sometimes a male thing to do is to steal a womans credits if they think they can get away with it..... Even when its proven to be myself on some of the credits they claim, they still dont take down their credits. One of whom tells people that he started the picking trend in recording - hooo boy - I dont know why they seem to have to lie like this - its NOT true as you can see above....eventually the truth gets out. It was Ray Pohlman, Arthur Wright, Rene Hall, all fine guitar studio musicians also who started the trend of playing the Elec. Bass with a pick in recordings as early as 1956. PS. Youll find my picking technique described in full-detail on both the Bass DVD Course and the Music Reading DVD with Manual and also some on the Teaching Playing & Hangin DVD. See the Catalog at my website. And yes, you can walk jazz (and Standards) on the bass using the pick method too - you just need to add more bottom (not too much!) to your bass. Remember to always play with bass volume level about 1/3 less than maximum so your output isnt full-force. But you do need more overall volume than with playing with fingers to get the same volume with picking tho your individual note definition is much better and youll execute 16th note patterns with finesse you cant do with fingers. You can purchase these picks in my CAtallog/Accessories and you will also receive the handy picture-sheet of how to hold your hand, the right angle to pick with and where on the bass strings to pick. - --------------------------- PS. Remember, ONLY the hard pick gets the sound. The tear-drop shape is the only shape used by the top Pros in recording in the 1960s, it still is the greatest/fastest shape for the solid sounds you want - no need to suffer through using it wrong. The correct picking technique insures having fun and longevity in your playing career. For those 16th notes, accuracy and MY SOUNDS this is the only that works. Taught it to my students like Dave Hungate (Toto) and all the top group rockers, all the string bassists since 1969 (see roster of some of my former students on my website under Catalog). Leo Fender measured the sound - I wasnt even trying to play hard and the needle flew off the gauge, the attack was so great........... Quincy Jones said he would only hire me as my picking sounds were the only sounds that got on the film for the movie scores so great.....you want the Mission Impossible sounds? This the right way to do it, for both bottom end, power-snap and speed. Victor Wooten wanted a quick lesson at NAMM one-time, he learned it in 2-3 mins, it was so logical to him.....and easy. Also, I tell people they dont have to use a pick no, pickups and strings are better these days, but....for some things, using a pick is good....and if youre going to use a pick, then do it right! Also, you can get cleaner better finger sounds with a pick imo...just turn the amp knob to less highs, add more mid range (maybe a little bottom too, but not much, depending on your strings, pickup and amp), and a twist of your sound knob on the bass, voila. No problem. And...many dont know this top Pro trick: ...... whether you use pick or fingers, never play with instrument knob at full- volume ......volume should be only 2/3 the way way on at most, depending on the bass how well its made etc. - top pros never play full volume....sounds are better with volume knob is backed down some, whether its in the studio or playing live....... A few years back, to get any good sounds from the bass, it was thought you had to spend 2-3-400.00 dollars for a mixer too, to add compression, EQ all that - it was all big business for the magazine ads and manufacturers $$$...and they still couldnt get a good sound -- lol........... A 25-cent piece of doubled up felt on-top of the strings (or even cheaper piece of middle-grade foam underneath the strings barely touching the strings if you played by fingers) instantly got a great sound. Slight muting like that helps kill the over-tones and under-tones on the elec. bass that ruin your sounds to cut through with. Unbelievable what they try to do to sell unnecessary gear....its best to use top Pros secrets for playing live and recording. You can buy picks here under Accessories in the Catalog: carolkaye/catalog/
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 06:07:56 +0000
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