Tonefiend Forum

I mute the lowest string with my thumb resting on the string. That stops any auto picking my thumb might be tempted to do, I guess. I have not really experienced any problem but that may be because I originally played with a thumb pick. I gave up the thumb pick because it made the notes sound too different from the finger picked strings and it made it more difficult to mute the lower strings. YMMV

Thanks for the thoughts guys. Good stuff! I'll try muting the lower strings. I guess I've got two primary 'modes' of playing. One in the 'home rows' for roots/folk/blues types of stuff and then another on the higher frets that is mostly jazz, brazillian, whatever voicings for jazz/ballad type tunes. In the latter, I'm using lots of dominants, 9's, 11', and 13's which allow the chords to hang tightly together and therefore I don't think about the bass/root at all - or I'll add a more subtle bass line on another instrument when recording. But when I'm building around the more solid chords for the folk type stuff, then the bass line just begs me to come out. It does sound good in most cases, but it really limits the voicing options, substitutions, and rhythm that I can use because it's anchoring my left hand in place. Perhaps it's partly because I always play other instruments in band settings so I've never consciously approached the instrument as 'just one piece' of the band.

Anyways, I guess my next writing challenge will be to write a roots/folk tune without a bassline and see if I can make it work )

yeah, that's definitely part of it, but for those folky type chords, I think I've already stretched the voicings about as far as they can go in standard tuning. I'm walking the bass pretty independent of the root so I guess technically I'm voicing them often off other tones (though I'm not usually thinking about it consciously). I think my main self criticism is that I've confined myself to a whole rhythm/chord/fill 'style'. I think it's a common style and I'll definitely keep it in my bag, but I want to try some other approaches. So for the heck of it, I'm playing without my thumb tonight (it's evening here) and I'm liking some of what I'm getting. If I can settle on a couple patterns, I'll try putting a voice over it and see how it balances. By the way, I'm following your bass thread with great attention, but have nothing to contribute other than the fact that I've been wanting one of those for a long time....