What are you working on at the moment?

[Slim]

So as discussed elsewhere, if you're working on something or practicing something in particular, please tell us about it here!

From my point of view perhaps this thread will encourage me to practice a bit more.

At the moment I'm working on diminished scale stuff over dominant / altered 7ths. I have a backing track which is a loop of the first few bars of Larry Carlton's (It Was) Only Yesterday - there are a couple of places in that where you can play the diminished scale.

One really nice hack is that there are a number of major triads consisting of the diminished scale notes and if you deploy those in the right place, you get a lovely sophisticated, modern sound.

May post a video in a few days if I can get a bit more fluent with it.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Good luck! I wish I'd used a plectrum before now. It feels alien to me. People I've jammed with in the past have always commented on my unusual technique even with bass guitar. I sometimes pick in the traditional finger style, but intersperse this with a plectrum style action using the reverse of my index finger almost as if I'm holding an invisible pick. Unconventional and probably not conducive to progress as a player of either instrument. Still, stuck with it now and it's the way I enjoy playing.

[Slim]

Years ago I used to keep a Tele next to my desk and pick it up randomly and just out of laziness I started playing with my thumb. It does sound nice for jazz, in fact Wes Montgomery always played with his thumb so I'm in good company there. But I got out of the habit of playing with a pick, to the extent that I found playing with one to be a bit awkward.

However, playing with a thumb is limiting. You can't upstroke with a thumb, or at least I can't. So one good thing about playing with a thumb is that it brought my legato technique on a bit, to compensate for not using upstrokes.

This last few months though I've managed to train myself to play with a pick again. Except for chords, I have to use a thumb for those.