I was wondering, does anyone pluck the bass with their fingers?

And, to follow: does that make any worthwhile improvement in sound, or is it just a pain in the ass?

If you've never done it before you can get really cool, bloody blisters on your fingertips and freak out your friends.

...especially if you play well? Otherwise it just sounds sad.

I suppose you can play more complex things more quickly with fingers, but I'm don't exactly have the least clumsy fingers in the world when it comes to playing. So, I guess that's a no.

I used to play with my finger for years. I could play some really fast stuff, at some point I moved to playing with a pick and now lost all my ability to play fast with my fingers.

I can play fast parts with a pick, but I don't do it, there's no use for it. I have a friend who's an awesome bassplayer, he can play Teen Town with a pick.

The sound of fingers is totally different than the sound of a pick. You don't have that fast bright attack that you have with a pick, so everything you play is low and mellow. I also found that sometimes when you play fingers and your amp is set high, the sound can get very muddy.

You can pluck your fingers on the strings, near the neck, that's an interesting sound sometimes.

eliya wrote:You can pluck your fingers on the strings, near the neck, that's an interesting sound sometimes.

This is typically how I play guitar.

Mason wrote:

eliya wrote:You can pluck your fingers on the strings, near the neck, that's an interesting sound sometimes.

This is typically how I play guitar.

This is the way Geezer played bass. All that early Sabbath sound came from that.

SecondEdition wrote:

Mason wrote:

eliya wrote:You can pluck your fingers on the strings, near the neck, that's an interesting sound sometimes.

This is typically how I play guitar.

This is the way Geezer played bass. All that early Sabbath sound came from that.

Specifically, pluck on or near the 12th fret.

I would suggest playing with your fingers most of the time. The one thing that you can't really get from your fingers is a constant downstroke without an upstroke - you'll need a pick for that, or you could avoid jack-rabbiting altogether. Pick vs Fingers = Fingers (has a wider range of sounds) imo.