Grimalkin

Inverted wrist from 11.43, 12.39 to see what happens to your finger span and mobility when the thumb moves up:

Is it amateur dramatics night?

An exception rather than the rule.

1 minute ago, peteb said:

 

So me, Billy Sheehan, Bobby Vega, Andy Fraser, Joe Dart and countless others have poor technique but your tutors are right. OK... 

 

I can name you far more pro bassists who don't.

3 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

 

A recognised qualified tutor, not this...

7 minutes ago, peteb said:

 

All I can say that I'm glad that I didn't go to your teachers. To be fair, if I was teaching a beginner I would get them to keep their thumb behind the neck. But as they progress they need to develop both right hand and left hand muting techniques. Muting seems to be a very personal thing and you need to find out what works for you. For most electric bass players, that isn't necessarily strictly adhering to classical guitar technique. 

 

I think you are trying to validate poor technique because one guy didn't mention it...

Find me a tutor teaching that as a common muting technique.

2 minutes ago, peteb said:

I would expect a decent teacher to be aware of this and to able to teach it, rather than trying to enforce a classical guitar technique that isn't necessarily the best way of playing an electric bass.

 

Find me a teacher teaching that, I've had about 8 over the course of decades and not one mentioned or advised it once. They all worked in the business, session work for names/broadcasters etc.

One tutor is not enough of a sample size...

4 minutes ago, peteb said:

 

He didn't mention it because it isn't an issue. It is something that most decent bass players will do when the occasion demands it. This is a clip of Bobby Vega that demonstrates it pretty well, unless you are going to say that his technique is poor as well? Notice how he sometimes has the thumb behind the fretboard and sometimes over the top. 

 

 

Bobby is a pick player, so he doesn't have the benefit of right hand muting on the E string while working above it on the D and G strings in the way he's playing (the same reason slappers sometimes use the thumb to mute), bringing the thumb in now and again works for him. How many people do you know who play like Bobby Vega?

1 minute ago, peteb said:

When I went for a one-off lesson with a well known teacher / session bassist (who also plays for a very well known band, who are genuinely a household name), he pointed out a few things that I ought to look at in my playing. He didn't mention anything about not playing with my thumb over the neck! 

 

He didn't tell you it was a good idea either, or he would have.

4 minutes ago, peteb said:

 

No, they won't - they're not teaching you to play classical guitar. Will they be telling you that Billy Sheehan and countless other top players have bad technique?

 

Obviously, your standard left hand position is going to be with the thumb behind the neck, but there are plenty of situations (such as bending high strings, etc) when it is perfectly acceptable to use your thumb over the top of the fretboard to mute strings, etc. 

 

Do you think Jamerson's one fingered 'hook' should be taught to everyone because it worked for him?

Find me one tutor who recommends playing with your thumb over the neck as the OP describes: "All of the time..."

There are occasions for use, I don't and I've never met a tutor who advises muting like that in all the time I've worked as a musician.

Go to any bass tutor worth their salt and they will tell you the same thing.

Sans body it could make a novel guitar neck back-scratcher I suppose, or a deluxe length kitchen grater, that would provide a good run for ginger and such.

As poster mario_buoninfante, it isn't a case of absolutes. If you are playing repetitive lines at the bottom end of the neck, the thumb tends to move up the back of the neck to make things more comfortable. Having the thumb centred constantly at the bottom end of the neck, sets up an uncomfortable wrist angle if that's going to be the position for a prolonged time.

If you play around the centre of the neck where it widens out, playing say over four frets, the common maj/min scale shape, then you need the span, the arching and the full length of your fingers. My thumb is usually at the centre line of the back of the neck or just below to allow everything forward. Thumb over the top of the neck constricts all of that, plus you are playing on the pads of your fingers not the tips (see Marcus pic) and your fingers tend to fret at an angle, not so much parallel to the fret but across them.

If you want to get nimble, you won't make it gripping the neck. The idea is to be free-floating, you'll need less pressure fretting without the grip too.

Keep it simple. I started my collection of tin foil milk bottle tops during the lock-downs. They each feature the beak indentations of various birds attempting to access the cream atop of the milk. My favourite one was made by a blackbird, as I actually witnessed him attempting it.

It reminds me of Gulliver's visit to The Grand Academy of Lagado... 

"I was received very kindly by the warden, and went for many days to the academy. Every room has in it one or more projectors; and I believe I could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms.

The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour. He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate: but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me "to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers." I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them.

I went into another chamber, but was ready to hasten back, being almost overcome with a horrible stink. My conductor pressed me forward, conjuring me in a whisper "to give no offence, which would be highly resented;" and therefore I durst not so much as stop my nose. The projector of this cell was the most ancient student of the academy; his face and beard were of a pale yellow; his hands and clothes daubed over with filth. When I was presented to him, he gave me a close embrace, a compliment I could well have excused. His employment, from his first coming into the academy, was an operation to reduce human excrement to its original food, by separating the several parts, removing the tincture which it receives from the gall, making the odour exhale, and scumming off the saliva. He had a weekly allowance, from the society, of a vessel filled with human ordure, about the bigness of a Bristol barrel.

I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder; who likewise showed me a treatise he had written concerning the malleability of fire, which he intended to publish.

There was a most ingenious architect, who had contrived a new method for building houses, by beginning at the roof, and working downward to the foundation; which he justified to me, by the like practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider."

Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels, 1726.

You can see the score by that pic of Marcus, thumb over, all the finger length moves back. 

A few slappers adopt it on occasion and more, if you're on the thumb, right hand muting is scarce. There's a lot more to do with the left hand muting. 

17 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

My bass teacher told me that muting the E string with the left thumb over the top of the fret board is poor technique. Obviously I do it all the time. Why is it bad?

It grips the neck, but more importantly if you take your thumb high at the back of the neck, it takes away the reach length of your fingers at the front. Difficult to arch, difficult to span. Look at the shape of the hand from the side as you move the thumb up way beyond the centre line, you're left with stubs. 

I ain't not never seen nothing like it.

I don't know why you would want to...

There is a different connection with instruments though isn't there, a more personal connection.

"No, it's NOT like any other love 

This one is different because it's us!..."

My favourite Xmas ad ditty so far, I like the slightly sardonic '50s vocal delivery, and the dissonance of the interval sang for the word "Glee", unusual, a #5 I think.

At the end of the day, when you're on your last legs and not long for this world, possessions won't mean much at all, memories and experiences will.

There's a new collection in town...