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Alternating
Bass Thumb technique
Have a look at Fig.1. You need to fret an E major
chord. On the first beat your thumb strikes the
low open E string, on the second beat it strikes
the higher octave E at the 2nd fret of the D string,
and you repeat this sequence for the 3rd and 4th
beats. Now try doing the same with the chords of
C (Fig. 2) and G (Fig. 3) Voila! That's Alternating
Bass.
Once you're
reasonably confident you can do this on a single
chord, you need to get the hang of alternating the
bass through a chord sequence. Try it with the sequence
in Fig. 4. Note how the thumb moves away from root
and octave in the E major chord on the last beat
of the penultimate bar. Here the thumb strikes the
open D string, so we could say we are alternating
between root and 7th at this point. It leads the
exercise neatly back to the chord of C.
So far you've
just been using your thumb, but you are obviously
going to have to introduce your picking fingers
to make things interesting. In the C chord section
of Fig. 5, you strike an open E with your ring finger
at the same time as the thumb pick on the 2nd and
4th beats. Things get a little more difficult in
the G chord bars where your picking fingers play
in syncopation to the thumb picks, i.e. not at the
same time. The E chord section includes both syncopation
and simultaneous picking. Remember to start at a
slow tempo and only increase speed as your confidence
grows. These picking patterns sound a little ponderous
at a slow tempo, but they work really nicely when
played with a bit of speed.
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