JazzMaster Trem and fingerpicking techniques

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oid
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JazzMaster Trem and fingerpicking techniques

Post by oid » Mon Feb 12, 2018 3:19 am

Morning folks, I have been trying to find a way to play this trem while finger picking for awhile now and have not had much in the way of success. So far I have found two techniques that work but are less than ideal.

1. Use my forearm to press the bar down. This works well but I would like to be able to go up in pitch as well.
2. I plant my pinky on the pick guard and wrap my ring and middle fingers around the bar. This gives me all the control I need but reduces me to two digits for picking, if I take my middle finger off the bar to pick, it twists my hand in a way that makes the bar impossible to use.

So any of you finger pickers have techniques to share?

As an aside, what do you consider the best finger picking trem?

Thanks,
Adam
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Re: JazzMaster Trem and fingerpicking techniques

Post by Kiso » Mon Feb 12, 2018 4:19 am

I tried this a while ago and then I kinda had it in My palm or had My pinky wrapped around the bar and switched back and forth depending on situation. Methinks you would have to learn to use the bar as your anchoring point (extremely difficult, I know) If you want to use all fingers as well as all pitch-bending possibilities.

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Re: JazzMaster Trem and fingerpicking techniques

Post by marqueemoon » Mon Feb 12, 2018 6:45 am

If the arm is in the right place you can wrap your pinky around it.

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Re: JazzMaster Trem and fingerpicking techniques

Post by Embenny » Mon Feb 12, 2018 6:54 am

Fingerpicking techniques vary greatly. There's a reason Chet Atkins had a custom Bigsby arm made (the skinny one) to accommodate the ergonomics of his particular style.

Trem bars are cheap...if you want to really make it work, consider buying a spare or two and conducting some bending/cutting experiments to get it into a position that works for you. I'm primarily a fingerstyle guitarist, but that's mostly on acoustic/classical. On a Jag/JM, I leave the bar nearby and wiggle intermittently, not while actively fingerpicking, and I can tell you that there's no way I'd be able to do what I do without some kind of wrist strain if I was trying to hang on to the bar the whole time. With the bar bent the right way and maybe trimmed a little, I might be able to manage, but my dexterity would probably suffer too much for it to be worth it.
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Re: JazzMaster Trem and fingerpicking techniques

Post by fuzzjunkie » Mon Feb 12, 2018 8:46 am

Stevie Ray Vaughn used lefty Strat trems to approximate the trem position that Hendrix had playing his standard Strats as a lefty.

I thought that was a good idea for getting the trem handle in a better position for shoegaze, finger picking or pseudo pedal steel bends. There aren't any lefty JM trems as far as I know, so I bend my bars instead. I have on all my offsets since 1993 or so. Put 'em on a hard floor under your boot and pull until it's right is my technique, but you could use a vice or otherwise.

I bend them at a reverse angle to the factory angle. I'd post pics, but photobucket... I bend it so the bar lies straight between the A and D strings. It fits right in my palm. I can use all my fingers for picking or strum away in the shoegazer glide style uninterrupted.

_ _ _ _ _ bent backwards like this.
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Re: JazzMaster Trem and fingerpicking techniques

Post by oid » Thu Feb 15, 2018 2:49 am

More or less what I expected, I was really kind of hoping this was going to be one of those situations were I was somehow overlooking the extremely obvious and doing things in the most complicated way possible, oh well. i suppose I will just continue on, perhaps order a few extra bars and see if I can find a shape that works for me.

Thanks for the advice.
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Re: JazzMaster Trem and fingerpicking techniques

Post by Telliot » Thu Feb 15, 2018 7:51 am

Out of curiosity, are you using the trem as an accented vibrato for phrasing, or as a constant Kevin Shields-type wiggling effect as you play?
The cool thing about fretless is you can hit a note...and then renegotiate.

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Re: JazzMaster Trem and fingerpicking techniques

Post by Larry Mal » Thu Feb 15, 2018 8:14 am

I just think inherently the Jazzmaster is not the strongest design for this kind of thing. It's long, graceful, and slow bar isn't as easy to manipulate in that way.

I'd quicker want a Stratocaster type unit for fingerpicking, honestly. Maybe with a shorter bar for holding in the palm easier.

Even a Mustang unit might be better.

I do a lot of fingerpicking, and I wanted to say something about how to make it easier (and I am terrible at tremolo techniques bear in mind), but I just could not think of anything intelligent to say.
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Re: JazzMaster Trem and fingerpicking techniques

Post by Mad-Mike » Thu Feb 15, 2018 11:20 am

I do it by gently riding my palm on the bridge, when I'm fingerpicking, I'm putting some pressure on teh strings behind the bridge to hold them down, but the meat of my hand is not forward enough to dampen the strings and mute them. This is also the same technique I use to palm-mute the 3rd bridge effect when I want to not have the strings ringing out behind the bridge (controlling that on and off is a part of my style as a offset guitarist in general).

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Re: JazzMaster Trem and fingerpicking techniques

Post by oid » Thu Feb 15, 2018 1:40 pm

Telliot;
I am working towards using the trem while picking, considerably more subtle and not as constant as Mr Shields, but more then just accent.

Larry Mal;
I have never gotten along with the strat trem and its descendants, my bends are out of control as a rule with them.

Mad-Mike;
Think we have a failure in communication here, not sure were though, I can not quite figure out how the trem can be utilized with ones hand behind the bridge.

I am thinking the way to go is to hunt down some suitable steel and make a new bar, if the bar was a bit taller and ran parallel to the A or D string as fuzzjunkie mentions, it may just work. A left hand trem with straight bar would be almost perfect I suspect.
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Re: JazzMaster Trem and fingerpicking techniques

Post by Telliot » Thu Feb 15, 2018 3:22 pm

I agree about the Strat trem, I find a little movement goes a long way vs a Bigsby or JM tremolo system, which are both more forgiving to me.

I do a considerable amount of fingerpicking, and will sometimes hook my pinky around the trem arm as I play. It isn't the most comfortable position, but I tend to palm mute or anchor my hand with my palm above the bridge, so it works for me. If I planted my pinky I think I would have a harder time of it.
The cool thing about fretless is you can hit a note...and then renegotiate.

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Re: JazzMaster Trem and fingerpicking techniques

Post by oid » Thu Feb 15, 2018 6:16 pm

Planting the pinky is less than ideal, I have never been good with that style either, but it makes a good fulcrum and gives fairly fine control of the bar. I have never gotten a trem down, I am somewhat determined to get it with this one.
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Re: JazzMaster Trem and fingerpicking techniques

Post by oid » Sun Jul 15, 2018 9:57 pm

So, I am still somewhat struggling with doing the things I would like to with the trem while finger picking. Was just playing about with it, tried to work through some things I had in my head, not much luck, look down at the trem and see that little screw hiding behind the lock and have a good laugh at myself. Spend 30 seconds tweaking spring tension and get the trem arm at a good height, life is better.

Guess all the years of being useless with a trem had made it easy to assume the issue was with my inept trem work and not a trem that just needs setup. Anytime I broke the 1st, I could do the finger picking trem work just fine, it is so obvious, string breaks, tension on the spring drops by 20 or so pounds, trem arm rises. The clues were all there along with that screw staring at me, the knowledge was buried somewhere in the recesses of memory, and yet took me a year to put it all together.

The absolute best/worst part is that not to long ago I showed a fella who was having issues with his new Jag due to the trem arm being way to high how to adjust the spring tension to change the height of the arm, still was not enough of a hint for me!
Logic gates based on billiard-ball computer designs have also been made to operate using live soldier crabs of the species Mictyris guinotae in place of the billiard balls.

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