This might be a bit of a jumble. Wrote it whilst also trying to teach a Y7 Technology and Design class.
Without knowing, I'd imagine posture is a big part of it. That, and learning to relax. Possibly what you're experiencing is a combination of unuseful posture and inefficient movements leading to issues. We'll deal with these things separately. I'll lump posture and setup together as they relate to what it is that you're asking your hands to do, then we'll look at technique, because that's how you go about getting your hands to do those things.
It's usually a good idea to go back and run like a diagnostic on both these things (posture/setup and technique). Things should feel easy and you should be playing without strain, and this gives us a chance to find out the issues and fix them.
Setup and Posture
Double check your posture, play higher if you need to. Move it around until you get a posture where everything feels relaxed and natural. If you go too high though, it can cause tightness in your picking hand shoulder. (I play bass with fingers for this reason, my picking hand is propped over the top of the guitar so my shoulder isn't holding the weight of the arm, my hand ends up lying more or less where it should at the strings).
You mention pick thickness, scale length and string tension. I'm not sure string tension matters as you aren't bending on bass (I assume?). If the bass is well set up with appropriately low action, it shouldn't take much (or any) strength to fret. Similarly, I'm not sure pick thickness makes that much difference. Maybe if you're digging in for a certain sound? But otherwise, I'd soften my picking hand, pick more gently, and let the eq/amp settings do the work of giving you any attack that you want.
I know a couple of players in the 50s/60s who play shortscale basses because of issues with their wrists. I'm never sure I'm convinced by this. The difference between scale lengths is the first fret. I think that a proper setup, proper posture and proper technique play a much, much bigger role and that those adjustments will overcome any difference in scale length. On the other hand, I'm not going to argue with lads that have been gigging 5 nights a week for 40 years and tell me that it's the thing that has saved their playing.
Technique and Practice
This is harder.
There's a really tricky part of learning where you go from being "pretty good" to "advanced" (this are really shit words for what I'm talking about, sorry. With more time and care I'd find better ones) where you have to go back and break down the fundamentals again. We can all play guitar, but when we learned, we probably learned to do it in our own way that was good enough to get the job done. We probably learned with "incorrect" or inefficient technique because we needed to get it working one way or the other. So when we learned barre chords as an example, we might have learned to do it with a weird angle in our wrist, or with our fingers not meeting the fretboard at clean, perpendicular angles. This might have been out of necessity, because at that point, we didn't have the spare strength to do it a more "correct" way. Then we practise that for years and it becomes difficult to change. I was never going to be any better than a very good pianist because I had loads of uncorrected bad habits that I'd formed as a child, and my hands ended up entirely the wrong shape as a result. It is difficult to undo habit, but it can be done with practice.
Diagnostic Practice: Once you're happy with posture, take your set and run through it. Or just take other songs etc that you like to play. Try playing things
extremely slowly. Check which bits feel like stretches or strains, where you can feel yourself struggling. You're looking for pinch points, but where it feels like strenuous to play, or where you notice your posture chance (do you find yourself lifting the neck for certain points, does your shoulder ever move, does your elbow point inwards towards your ribs at any point?). In an ideal world, this shouldn't happen and we're trying to find these points to alleviate them.
Take these sections of music in isolation and concentrate on working out exactly how little effort is actually required. There's a very good chance that you're fretting things harder than you need to because of learned habits, so relax and see how little effort/squeeze is actually required. This will feel odd. Try to notice tension in your hands, your wrist, your forearm, your shoulder, then play again trying to keep that part relaxed. Play slowly, consciously relaxing as much as possible.
You might find yourself adjusting posture/setup again at this point, as issues become clear.
General practice: Play scales/arpeggios etc with the same approach. We're not really looking for speed here, just smoothness. This is teaching your hands how to relax.
Throughout all practice, think about how little actual work and effort is required to play. The fretting hand is four fingers, each moving maybe half an inch, placing a very gentle pressure on the string. This should not be strenuous. It's difficult and requires high degrees of concentration and co-ordination, yes, but it should not require any great gripping effort.
For picking hand technique, I would do take a similar approach. I'm fast on the guitar, not bass, though. I know how to pick efficiently and quickly, but my bass picking is sort of just good enough for what I need. The same principles apply, though. Take it slowly, watch out for bits that feel strenuous, make sure you aren't putting in more muscle than you should, make your technique as smooth and efficient as you can. I'd go through scales, arpeggios or exercises that are 2 notes per string, 3 notes per string 4 notes per string etc. Practice alternate and hybrid picking, again making your wrist as relaxed as possible and your movements as small and gentle as possible.
I would also think about getting a couple of lessons. We have this notion that lessons are fine when we're teenagers and getting started, and that once you're good, you're set. This isn't the case. You don't need someone to teach you how to play, but maybe just having someone very good running their eye over what you're doing and coming up with solutions would be useful. I'd think about getting a lesson with someone, then a follow up a month or two later, then again after that. Or monthly for six months. Might be tricky to find someone willing to take you on on those terms, though. I know you don't like to do it, but you could always name drop that you're mates with PJ Harvey and Steve Albini.
Freddy V-C wrote: Mon Feb 02, 2026 11:57 am
*Hilariously it turns out PJ Harvey was in the audience.
Fuck. Just can't help yourself, can you?
