pragmatic steps for gaining an autonomous thumb.

ripock

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I've been listening to some John Fahey guitar CD's and watching Justin Johnson on youtube, and I want their ability to play a droning bass line with the thumb whilst picking with the other fingers.

But how does one go about that?

I've looked at a few things and the advice is to practice. However that's pointless. It is like saying, "you want to beat Lebron James? Just score more points than him." The goal is obvious but the problem involves how do you achieve that goal? In terms of the droning bass line, the goal is obvious: the player just keeps it going while he or she plays the melody. Easy Peasy, right? However, what steps does one take to approach that goal?

To that end, has anyone run across a systematic approach to teach the thumb to just keep on keeping on while the other fingers pick the melody?
 
Hate to repeat what "everyone else" has said, but it is all down to practice.

You're trying to achieve two things here :

1. Play melody/arpeggio or other accompaniment with your fingers

2. Accompany that with a drone or bass line.

So ... learn the finger work then introduce the thumb.

Do bear in mind that, on a ukulele especially, the thumb will probably end up using some of the strings that the fingers use. That's the nature of the beast.

Oh, did I mention, it takes a lot of practice ;)
 
Justin Johnson is a great guitar player and very underrated it seems.

If it were me, I'd send him an email asking what the specific technique is called, and include a link to one or more of his videos with this type of playing, and also ask he if knows of any resources from which to learn, either books or videos....

Then, once I know the 'official' name of the technique, I'd search online myself for more info.

Otherwise, it would be just lots of iterative guessing and frustration. Been down that path too many times :).

see: http://www.justinjohnsonlive.com/contact.html
 
okay, that's fair enough. However I have just a procedural question on how to approach this matter: do I try to fit the melody notes in-between the drone notes or should these two things be oblivious to each other and do their own thing?

My intuition leads me to the latter approach. In lieu of any advice from people who can already do this, my plan is to practice the drone so that it becomes as thoughtless as tapping one's foot. Then I'll just play my melody whilst tapping my foot and droning. At least that's how I think I will approach it. However I am sure there will be some physical or neurological hurdles that trick me up. But I'll deal with that
 
okay, that's fair enough. However I have just a procedural question on how to approach this matter: do I try to fit the melody notes in-between the drone notes or should these two things be oblivious to each other and do their own thing?

My intuition leads me to the latter approach. In lieu of any advice from people who can already do this, my plan is to practice the drone so that it becomes as thoughtless as tapping one's foot. Then I'll just play my melody whilst tapping my foot and droning. At least that's how I think I will approach it. However I am sure there will be some physical or neurological hurdles that trick me up. But I'll deal with that

Whatever is the path of least resistance with the highest yield for you...:)

If someone else has figured out the mental and physical pathways to success, I prefer not to have to reinvent the wheel when it might take 5-10 mins of thinking about it for me, and then another 2-3 mins to type out the email...

Maybe I'm just being lazy, but sometimes time is short and I cannot allocate the effort to the task for discovering my own path to the desired result.

Sorry I cannot offer specific answers as to the 'how to' for this technique. I don't necessarily play this way, nor have an interest or the time myself right now.

I hope you can figure it out, and if you do, please share with the rest of us mere mortals. :)
 
It may help if you approach the technique as a roll. Practice a forward roll as thumb, index, middle. Thumb plays 4&3 alternately while index and middle play 2&3. This method is used in blugrass banjo picking. Once you can maintain a consistant rhthym then try tmi, then mix them up to timtmi or some combination. Start by making chords then you can move to picking out melody lines. You can practice your rolls on a table or chair arm.
 
Hello ripock,
Another alternative to your studies is a look at the many threads on utube for "Travis" picking.
p i m a with the many alternatives.
PS: Try "Travis picking for ukulele" into utube.
 
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It may help if you approach the technique as a roll. Practice a forward roll as thumb, index, middle. Thumb plays 4&3 alternately while index and middle play 2&3. This method is used in blugrass banjo picking. Once you can maintain a consistant rhthym then try tmi, then mix them up to timtmi or some combination. Start by making chords then you can move to picking out melody lines. You can practice your rolls on a table or chair arm.

I already practice Travis picking. So that puts me in good stead. However, I don't think I understand why standing on furniture will help
 
It will elevate your playing to a higher plane. I meant for you to tap out the rolls on a hard surface, but you knew that, didn't you?
 
It will elevate your playing to a higher plane. I meant for you to tap out the rolls on a hard surface, but you knew that, didn't you?

to be honest, I didn't. I knew you couldn't mean what I thought you did, but I didn't understand. However your response is going to buoy my heart through the drudgery of the workweek.
 
Basically it is impossible on our ukulele, because it requires three strings for bass.

I arranged it with drop F tuning. I have some explanation of it in there.

http://forum.ukuleleunderground.com/showthread.php?129313-Amazing-Grace-(Travis-picking-arrange)

However, what steps does one take to approach that goal?

To that end, has anyone run across a systematic approach to teach the thumb to just keep on keeping on while the other fingers pick the melody?

I play travis picking on my guitar.

Basically they contain two parts. One is alternate thumb one is melody. In general, we practice alternate thumbs first. Then we practice melody. Eventually we combine them together. It is like left hand practice and right hand practice on piano. Actually travis picking started as a imitation of ragtime piano.
 
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I apologize for not being around to respond. Other things have been demanding my time.

It seems travis picking is the answer, which is good because I already practice it. I guess I just need to practice a lot more because I can do the patterns just fine and add chords, but I just felt I was missing the big picture. I have Aaron Keim's books and with practice I can play the songs, but I wanted to move beyond mere mimicry. Essentially I want to do what I already do, but add a drone to it. What I like to do is wank around with pentatonic scales and riffs. However, when I try to add a drone, the melody notes either occur with the drone or they robotically occur right in between the drone notes. I can't convince my thumb and my melody fingers to ignore each other and just do their own part.

After reading everyone's insights I just need more practice. I think I was just freaking out because halfway through the process, the pieces weren't coming together and I started thinking I was doing something wrong. I'll just go back to practicing clawhammer with my re-entrant uke and travis picking with the linear uke, and give it another year and see if the skills don't start to come together. Thanks for being good listeners.
 
To that end, has anyone run across a systematic approach to teach the thumb to just keep on keeping on while the other fingers pick the melody?

When I was starting to learn slack key guitar, a guy suggested that I should spend quite some time just learning to play the bass notes. Ignore the melody part of the tune until I could play the bass notes without thinking about it.

What I ended up doing was setting up a metronome and a timer, and every day for two weeks, I spent ten minutes a day just playing alternating bass notes. (I was using Open G tuning, so I was playing either strings 6 & 4, or 5 & 4, on a DGDGBD tuning). It was boring as hell, but it worked well. It also helped with my travis picking in standard tuning.

So, I'd suggest the same trick on a uke. Set up your metronome, probably for about 80bpm to start with (if you don't have a metronome, there's tons of smart phone apps that work well). Then, using only your thumb, just play strings 4 & 3 over and over, keeping in time with the metronome. Do it every day for at least two weeks, for a minimum of 10 minutes per day. Don't skip any practice sessions. You need to be consistent about it.

If you find it getting easier, increase the metronome speed by 10bpm every few days. By the end of my two weeks, I was easily playing at 120bpm.

Once you can do it easily, start putting in the melody notes.
 
I think that I am doing what you are talking about with my thumb. I either drone on the G string, or sometimes bounce between the G and the C strings in just a rhythmic manner while my other fingers do more fancy stuff. What does your thumb do? For me it just seemed natural to drone that top string, or the top two strings. Otherwise my thumb would feel sad and left out.
 
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I think that I am doing what you are talking about with my thumb. I either drone on the G string, or sometimes bounce between the G and the C strings in just a rhythmic manner while my other fingers do more fancy stuff. What does your thumb do? For me it just seemed natural to drone that top string, or the top two strings. Otherwise my thumb would feel sad and left out.

My question is this: as a musician how do you think about these things and how they relate? Do you get a drone going and then do the fancy stuff between the beats of the drone? Do you get a drone going and then just forget about it and do your fancy stuff without any regard to the drone--letting the fancy stuff play over the drone? I know what my Russian lifting coach would say: go practice for a year and if, after that, you still have questions about minutiae, then we'll talk. However, I was just curious what other players did.
 
My question is this: as a musician how do you think about these things and how they relate? Do you get a drone going and then do the fancy stuff between the beats of the drone? Do you get a drone going and then just forget about it and do your fancy stuff without any regard to the drone--letting the fancy stuff play over the drone? I know what my Russian lifting coach would say: go practice for a year and if, after that, you still have questions about minutiae, then we'll talk. However, I was just curious what other players did.

Perhaps think about it this way: your melody notes are going to either fall on the beat, or between them. (If you're starting out with this stuff, it's probably best to avoid anything that has anything faster than an eighth note, until you've grokked it properly).

So, that means that your melody note needs to be played at the same time as the drone note, or between drone notes.

(It can get more complicated than this, but it's a good starting point to build your understanding from).
 
However, when I try to add a drone, the melody notes either occur with the drone or they robotically occur right in between the drone notes. I can't convince my thumb and my melody fingers to ignore each other and just do their own part.

.
Isn't that what is supposed to happen? I guess that I thought the droned was sort of keeping time.
 
for the record, I understand and agree with what you guys are saying. I was only trying to say that it isn't getting less mechanistic over time. With other ukulele skills, you start off being very schematic and have a list of things to be done. Then you just repeat the steps again and again. Eventually, the steps just disappear and you're doing it without thinking. With the drone, however, I have been at this stage for a while now and I was just chatting sociably about it. I'm not going to burn my ukulele or anything like that; I was just dismayed that it was taking so long.
 
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