Rest stroke exercises?

[Huw Foster]

Hi guys,

A student of mine needs to work on getting more consistent rest strokes. He’s come from playing guitar, so quite often he’ll pluck a string without landing firmly on the one below. Often this results in a lot of undefined notes, and it affects his tone a bit. He also tends to play more with the tip of the finger, whereas it’s generally better to play a little further down the finger to get a solid tone.

I’ve suggested concentrating on just the plucking hand, doing some steady alternate strokes up and down the strings whilst muting with the fretting hand. That’s all fine, but it’s not the most stimulating exercise.

I was wondering if any of you guys can suggest any other exercises for working on this. Would be much appreciated if so!

[TKenrick]

I'd suggest exactly as you've done to start out with; sure, it's boring, but it's necessary to get used to the movement. As far as other specific exercises for rest strokes I can't think of any, other than using snippets of bass lines and getting the student to film their right hand as they play so they can see what they actually do compared to what they think they're doing...

Another tactic that might be worthwhile is getting your student to realise that we don't really pluck the string, it's more of a pushing motion; in a decent rest stroke there's a split second of 'pressing' your finger into the string before releasing it and sounding the note.

If your student has access to a DAW, then recording themselves and seeing uneven waveforms where they're tickling the strings might help - sometimes it's useful to have a visual perspective on things.

[Huw Foster]

1 hour ago, TKenrick said:

I'd suggest exactly as you've done to start out with; sure, it's boring, but it's necessary to get used to the movement. As far as other specific exercises for rest strokes I can't think of any, other than using snippets of bass lines and getting the student to film their right hand as they play so they can see what they actually do compared to what they think they're doing...

Another tactic that might be worthwhile is getting your student to realise that we don't really pluck the string, it's more of a pushing motion; in a decent rest stroke there's a split second of 'pressing' your finger into the string before releasing it and sounding the note.

If your student has access to a DAW, then recording themselves and seeing uneven waveforms where they're tickling the strings might help - sometimes it's useful to have a visual perspective on things.

Cheers Tom! Good couple of bits of advice.