-
Another perspective …
One thing I do with students and really lean into with electric guitarists — almost all of whom use a pick — is dynamics, timbre, and accent patterns.
If I hear a kid play a bunch of notes, I’m going to go “check” and start listening to see if they’re playing expressively and making the instrument move tonally with their hands.
I think you could argue that that’s a limitation of playing with a pick, or at least it’s a tendency of young musicians playing with a pick, to focus on speed and forget that control is a massive part of technique.
So I don’t think it’s weird to say that someone playing with their thumb, which is an obvious diversion from the usual technique, should be particularly attuned to the real and perceived technical limitations of that choice.
-
04-21-2025 09:56 AM
-
It all depends on the OPs end goal really. If they want to learn all they can to play like Wes, well, jazz school isn’t the right choice for that.
Originally Posted by pamosmusic
If they want to teach music education, school is a great idea. It’s even a requirement in the state I live in.
I guess my initial suggestion would be for the musician who doesn’t want to teach and also wants to hold onto idiosyncratic limitations. I think the combination of these two traits is not a good fit for jazz college.
-
As I've already pointed out, using the thumb is no less a limitation than some plectrum-picking techniques. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
It's what you do with it that counts.
-
Right. And I would expect someone to be held accountable for the limitations of their picking technique. Originally Posted by James W
And right or wrong, if you're auditioning for a guitar teacher who doesn't use their thumb, then they're going to notice those limitations more readily.
That's worth noting too -- I didn't audition with a guitar teacher in the room for college auditions. For grad school, the guitar teacher was there. The student I had auditioning this year had six auditions and there was a guitar teacher in four of them.
-
Just curious, what do you mean here by being 'held accountable'? Originally Posted by pamosmusic
I'm not sure about this - it might in fact be the opposite way, where someone who uses their thumb has a greater knowledge of it and therefore is in a better position to judge it. But really, many right hand techniques have some sort of limitation - the skill is in making music within that limitation or idiosyncrasy. Grammar might seem like a limitation or strict rules to follow, but not to the poet etc. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
-
It's an audition. So I would expect someone to be dinged for their musical deficiencies. Originally Posted by James W
This is still a practical question. It's a prospective teacher selecting prospective students. I certainly don't think a dude who's kind of Eh with a pick is getting anywhere over someone who's musical and interesting with their thumb. But when a teacher who uses a pick is thinking about the prospect of teaching someone who for whatever reason has chosen not to use a pick, that's going to be a factor.I'm not sure about this - it might in fact be the opposite way, where someone who uses their thumb has a greater knowledge of it and therefore is in a better position to judge it. But really, many right hand techniques have some sort of limitation - the skill is in making music within that limitation or idiosyncrasy. Grammar might seem like a limitation or strict rules to follow, but not to the poet etc.
I think it's an interesting question. I've never had someone want to audition on a nylon string. I think it's an extremely valid artistic choice, but I'm not sure what that looks like in the room with a couple music professors choosing the next year's class. These things matter, whether they should or not.
-
You're confusing picking limitations with musical deficiencies. George Benson for example - his picking technique has rules and therefore limitations, but it doesn't show up in his music. Good thumb players similarly don't draw attention to their limitations. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
-
No, I'm not. Originally Posted by James W
Musical limitations often have their root in technical limitations.**
Maybe it just makes me a jerk, but I know full well that most people who are playing with their thumb are going to struggle to play at an up tempo and literally the first thing I'm going to do is ask them to play at an up tempo. If they sound good at an up tempo, then that's absolutely wonderful.
If some kid shows up shredding with a pick, I'm going to probably ask them for a chord solo. How do they do with chording -- can they bring out a melody? Do they play hybrid or ditch the pick or what?
I'm not talking about making good music with your thumb. I'm talking about looking at an eighteen year old kid and deciding whether or not they're going to be able to play bop heads at tempo. That's part of the repertoire, and being able to execute that stuff is part of making good music, the same way being able to leave space and let a melody breathe is an important part of making good music.
**interestingly enough, technical limitations often come back to musical deficiencies. If some's playing is boring, I often try to bring them back to scales and get them to accent and and play even crescendos and stuff. But if someone is having trouble with their triplets at tempo, I often have them put the guitar down and count and sing and stuff. Funny how that works.
-
Ritcie Hart told me that Berklee used to give him a hard time when he was studying there (but decades ago) because he was a thumb player at the time (he still is, but he can also play with the pick at Benson level).
At some point the guitar department realized he could read and play anything they put in front of him with the thumb, so after that they were chill about it.
When I was there (2001), i don't think it mattered how one played, there were people playing any style imaginable, hybrid picking, thumb, economy, finger style, index and thumb only..
-
I play index and thumb and always have. I never liked the feeling of holding a pick because I like feeling the strings against my fingertips rather than the feel of pinching a piece of plastic, or some such. I feel them on the fingertips with my fretting hand. I want to feel them with my fingertips on my picking hand, too. I am not going to compare myself to a college educated jazz guitarist, but it is possible to get index and thumb to replicate everything a pick can do especially with nails on both of them. It takes work, but if the OP is really concerned about not using a pick there is that alternative as well. Originally Posted by Alter
-
One of the questions behind this conversation is, "What is the point of a course of study?" Or, to take it from another angle, "What is it that the deviser of the course of study hopes to deliver to the student?"
Long detour on the way to a conclusion: My education was in traditional liberal-arts territory--English lit, which encompasses bodies of knowledge (absorption of a mass of texts and literary traditions) and some related skill-sets, mainly textual analysis and "writing"*. And "writing" is the closest thing to what music education intends to deliver, since it's eventually performative and dependent on a mixture of skills and understandings--and it is, in the ways it produces its products, enormously individual. I learned to write without going through a conservatory-style regimen--sort of like learning jazz on the bandstand, I suppose. Though, like the newbie in a jazz jam, I did have some understanding of the basics and familiarity with conventions and traditions acquired via bits and pieces of a conventional education.
But then, the bulk of my writing hasn't been fine-art stuff but academic and journalistic material--I'm just your regular freelance ink-stained wretch, the product of a kind of apprenticeship environment. And while I have produced poetry, I didn't go through an MFA creative-writing program to do so, and in fact have a number of doubts about the effectiveness of MFA programs. Nevertheless, were I to design a creative-writing regimen, it would include a lot of very traditional stuff--command of "classical" prosody and poetic forms (sonnet, heroic couplet, quatrain, limerick, right up to gnarly stuff like the sestina and villanelle), as well as theoretical material from linguistics and rhetoric. And students whose attitude amounted to "Why do I need all this crap if I'm just going to write prose poems?" would be invited to follow the syllabus or depart. Because my take on "writing" is that behind the simple or merely idiosyncratic work lurks a larger body of understanding and skills. And of course, just about everything in the curriculum could be learned on one's own, without the roadmap of a formal program. (All this applies to the whole range of expressive writing, from fiction to screenwriting.)
When you sign up for a course of study, it's not like the mix-and-match menu of a Chinese take-out restaurant. The designers, for better or worse, have notions about what skills matter and how they ought to be acquired and shaped. It might suck to have to follow somebody else's regimen, but that is precisely what is on offer. I suspect that a decently designed jazz program would recognize the potential of a thumb-only or fingerstyle player and still insist on studying pick-style as part of the program--because all of those techniques are part of the tradition, and mastery of the whole range of techniques is the goal. What the student does with that command of technique later is not the concern of the school. (Though one certainly loves to have bragging rights when a student does well.)
* In scare quotes because writing itself is not a single skill but an amalgamation of control of grammar, vocabulary, and rhetoric, among others. But it is finally something that you do with those component skills and understandings.
-
We are so far off in the weeds now. Originally Posted by James W
Since OP is gone, our new hypothetical OP is concerned about assignments to play Donna Lee at 240bpm and they can’t because they’re an unwavering thumb player. So they’re already working on rebuttals as to why they shouldn’t fail the assignment due to their own choices… Jazz college might not be a good fit.
But this is all hypothetical because OP hasn’t come back and given us any more details.
My point is, if you’re stuck in your ways and nothing is going to change your mind, don’t go to college to fight with professors over picks. Just do something else with your life.
-
I agree 100% in general terms. However, I wouldn't base my decision solely on whether I want to play with a pick or not. Regardless of what Wesmo did or anyone else, the OP has a right pursue their passion and using a pick only figures into that if they can't make the grade otherwise, IMHO. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
-
So, if Wes applied, he wouldn't get in? Or, he'd fail the course of study, despite being, arguably, the consensus choice for best ever? He'd flunk out for not being able to play Donna Lee at 220bpm? Seems wrong.
OTOH, school is about transmitting a body of knowledge. And, the students are expected to execute. Wes didn't read afaik, but would you expect a college jazz guitar program not to require reading? Would you expect the program to relax their requirements because there was something a student preferred not to do?
My thought is to accept the idea that to get the degree you have to pass a test that may require a pick, depending on the school. They can't make you do it on your own time, but can it hurt to have the skill?
I'd guess that everybody, in every major, eventually has to pass a required class that they don't like.
-
I think we're using the word 'limitations' differently. My point is everyone has technical limitations to some degree, and that often very sophisticated improvisers such as George Benson produce wonderful music within quite specific picking systems that are incontrovertibly limited (he's an upstroke escape player) but you didn't respond to this point... Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Hence I'm not using the word 'limited' to describe someone who can't play bop heads at tempo. (And I don't think picking limitations is synonymous with musical deficiencies.)
I defer to your experience that generally you find thumb players less fleet than plectrum-pickers. To that I would respond, though, that a) most plectrum-pickers also aren't fleet* and b) it is possible to be fleet using your thumb.
I'm not sure if it is generally harder for most people to be fleet with their thumb than it is with a plectrum. Personally I find using a plectrum properly more difficult than fingerpicking, yet most things I've read seem to think the opposite, that it's easier to be fast with a plectrum.
*It might also be the case that more plectrum pickers are fleet simply because it is the commonest RH technique for jazz guitar.
-
You’ve mentioned some of the Troy Grady terminology up thread — do the Grady exercise with a pick. Play sixteenths on a single string until you top out. Then do the same with just your thumb. Originally Posted by James W
Speed is an issue, for most people most of the time.
Not for all people all the time, but for most people most of the time.
Benson having certain constraints on how notes should be arranged across the strings to facilitate his speed isn’t a limitation in the same way.
-
If you can play with your thumb anything like Jim Mullen in that video, go for it. Jeez, that is fire!
-
I'm struggling to see a disagreement here.
I would say most would find it harder achieve the same sort of agility with the thumb alone as they would with a pick. The pick is good for rapid linear playing, in the same way that finger style is good for arpeggios and counterpoint. The thumb on the other hand is limited to mostly downstrokes so it will require more work to get things up to speed - there are ways to work around it - some points of comparison with things like Benson and Manouche style picking can be helpful.
IMO you should be thinking a lot about left hand fingerings that use slurring and downward economy/sweep picking. I would suggest sleuthing out the ways that Wes and Jim Mullen etc put the lines on the instrument - problem solving. Video footage can help. Maybe you are doing this stuff already.
So, if you want to put in the work that would make this possible, I think that is something guitarists would really respect and non-guitarists would be relatively oblivious to. BUT - you do need to be do the things that jazz guitarists do, that's the main thing. That's bop heads, soli, soling on faster tempo tunes, all the stuff mentioned above. you don't need to be Pasquale perhaps, but there's a basic bar. I think you will need to develop solutions for these situations, and you may not find most guitar teachers are a great deal of help here - so it's down to you.
OP - it doesn't sound like you are there with it yet. There's a decision to be made here.Last edited by Christian Miller; 04-21-2025 at 05:57 PM.
-
Originally Posted by Peter C
??! anyone that could play like that wouldn't need to go to jazz school, they'd teach!
S
-
Yeah +1 to all of this Originally Posted by Christian Miller
-
Seems to me this young man has disappeared. I have to wonder if he's at all ready for what he's seeking if he's only been playing 2 years.
But I'm pretty sure there are schools like Berklee that will take him and his money- some of the programs there have a pretty low bar from what I've seen.
-
Whether you get totally ripped off or whether you find a teacher who can change your life depends on a lot of things. A place like Berklee has a very wide spectrum of teachers and you can even find ones that play with their thumbs. More importantly, you can find a community of students that are attracted to teachers like that, and finding the other students that share these questions will lead to something the catalogues will never tell you: It's the environment of students that can teach you more than the teachers, more than the opinions on a forum, more than all the videos on YouTube. If you are lucky, you'll beat the crap shoot and find students from all around the world who will create the best music you can ever make no matter what fingers you use. Originally Posted by JGinNJ
And here's the real point: Some people think that music is about the technique that allows you to play what others have played; to play what you think the genre requires. But one thing I found in a music school was those one or two great teachers who showed me it wasn't about playing someone else's lines the way they played them, but making the music I needed to make whether it's with a thumb or with 6 fingers on a hand with fingerpicks surgically implanted.
If you learn about the music and the requirements of the music, you'll find a way. Maybe you go in on day one, playing with your thumb. A teacher encourages you not to give up and you discover that fast lines are beyond your present technique. That evening you discover that by using your thumb with index finger, you can play lines you only heard in your mind. Who told you you can't do that? It's jazz. You write the rules. In a music rich environment with good community support, you can find a way. Who knows the music of Kevin Eubanks? Thumb and index.
A good music school certainly understands that.
Here's Kevin Eubanks playing thumb and index. Don't play to the limitations of your tools, use your imagination to find what's beyond.
Kevin's solo begins about 6 minutes.
He found inspiration in Wes but he found himself in his hands. Don't let anyone tell you what you can't do.
-
The short answer is that if he can play well enough, he'll be accepted. No matter what his technique. And if a school wouldn't accept him because he plays with his thumb rather than a pick, probably not the school he'd want to attend. Originally Posted by JGinNJ
But I think our original poster realized that he wasn't going to get an answer here, but saw that his question was dragged into another demonstration of Sayre's law. If he bailed on us, that was probably a wise decision and bodes well for his future as a person who can see the forest instead of getting lost in the trees.
-
No, of course, which is why I pointed out that we were using the word 'limitation' in different senses. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Regarding the Grady exercise, I don't think it reveals much, really. Starting with speed may have its place as a strategy for learning technique with a plectrum but not, for example, fingerstyle where the emphasis is very much on starting slow and gradually increasing speed the traditional way - I'm guessing it's the same with just the thumb.
So the Grady test is ill-suited for checking a person's speed-potential for techniques that don't involve a plectrum.
-
James, play an upstroke with your thumb. Originally Posted by James W
Thumb style playing is almost exclusively downstrokes.
I really don’t know why it’s so controversial to say that speed is a more significant hurdle when you’re playing with your thumb than with a pick. It’s pretty obvious if you try it. Playing with a pick — after a minor adjustment to playing with basic alternation — gets you going twice as fast out of the gate. That doesn’t mean pick style players play twice as fast as thumb style players across the board, but it does mean that a beginner or intermediate player with their thumb will be significantly slower than someone who has basic alternation together.
If you want to play fast with your thumb you have to compensate with a lot of slurs which can really complicate the way you articulate and blend with other instruments etc. Some people do this really well but it is a significant hurdle.
This is a pretty fundamental thing about the techniques and I’m a little confused as to why we’re arguing about it.
Reply With Quote
Four
Today, 05:23 AM in The Songs