PickFinger--Possible Bond Nemesis

It could be a Bond film title too--a bass player threatens to kill every musician in the world by putting round wound extra bright strings on a full-scale double bass and playing Stormy Weather with a pick.

Listen, I'll use a pick anytime a song calls for it no matter how adept I get at using the fingers.

Around a year ago? Longer? I started consciously to learn to ploink the bass with my fingers. It was hard at first--45 years is a long time to develop a playing habit. But I feel confident enough with using the fingers now and prefer it. For some reason, it makes me feel more in control and less controlled by the instrument. I don't mean that I'm great, but I can tell that I've improved a lot. Somehow, it even gave me greater insight into timing and harmony. For many years, I felt that I was musically stagnated. Over the last year, I've felt the mojo return, and I'm learning things through my playing. I'm not bragging. I'm 59 and only now really learning what I should have learned from the beginning.

Growth and improvement, no matter how small, are always a cause for a mental celebration, in my head.

Like Martin Luther king Phrased it. IF you cant run crawl. As long as you are moving. Failures and mistakes are only markers of the progress we are making! Just do it!

I'm nearly 60, and it feels good to keep learning something that makes a difference in my playing and makes me fall in love with playing again.

When I started playing bass, I'd been playing guitar for around 10 years, so |I went straight for the pick.
after a while, I started going fingerstyle, to the point that now it's almost awkward playing with a pick. There's 2 or 3 things that I will sometimes use the pick for, but not always on those peices.

I started playing bass with a bow. That was in the Jacksonville public schools system 1962 About a year after Dad was stationed to the Wiesbaden AFB, I was given a Framus Simi acoustic electric bass. I used my fingers, I was 12 at that time. Two fingers I started using immediately, now a days I use 4 fingers but most of the lines don’t require more than just the pointer and flipping the bird finger. I keep a pick in a pocket on the strap incase I need fast notes with the attack they provide, fairly rare.

On classical guitar I use all 5.