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Right Hand Techniques on Electric Bass
As I was posting some of my previous videos I started thinking that I should add a new one describing some of the right hand techniques you've seen me using, so here it is.
Conventional Right Hand Technique
When I was learning to play I was taught to place the thumb of my right hand on either a pickup or on the bottom string. Then pluck the strings with my index and middle fingers. It's a very common right hand technique for the bass and one that I still use a lot. The downside of this technique in my opinion is that it doesn't make enough use of the thumb. The thumb is probably our most versatile and dextrous digit, so some time ago I decided that my two finger technique wasn't versatile enough for everything I wanted to play on the bass and I started working on some right-hand techniques that use my thumb more.
String Damping
A simple way to use your thumb with the two finger right hand technique is to use it to dampen and mute the lower strings. Damping is a key issue for bass players especially with the lower strings because they have a tendency to ring and create unwanted noise when we're not using them.
If you position your thumb so that it touches these strings when you're not using them it will mute them and stop any unwanted noise coming from them. This is a simple adaptation to the technique that can make an important difference to your playing, especially if you have a low B string on your bass. It will involve some practice because you will need to get used to constantly moving your thumb as you change strings but if you're conscientious about listening out for unwanted noise from your lower strings when you practice then it should become instinctive fairly quickly.
Use the right hand thumb
Now let's change the technique altogether and get our thumb playing notes instead of just damping. The first thing we need to look at is how can we combine using our fingers and thumb. Example 1 is a simple demonstration of how we can play notes by alternating between our thumb and first finger. In the example T means play the note with your right hand thumb and i means play the note with your right hand index finger. As you can see from the example we should be able to use this technique to play across strings as in bar one, on adjacent strings as in bar two and on the same string as in bar three.