Index vs. Thumb Leads

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Two Finger Pickers

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For the eclectic banjo player who counts 2-finger styles among their tools of the trade.

515 Members, Created 1/31/2011 -

Administrators: stigandr5 (owner) , Marc Nerenberg , revellfa

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From Picking Dick on 11/6/2019 11:50:41 AM

I don’t really see the need for Index Lead AND Thumb Lead. I pick the first and maybe a bit of the 2nd string with my index, and 5,4,3 and a bit of 2 with my thumb. And I just call it Two Finger. Am I missing something?

2 Comments
	chip arnold says: 11/6/2019 3:05:34 PM Lots of people switch leads back and forth between the two.
	Neil Allen says: 4/18/2020 11:06:39 PM I've recently got back into 2 finger thumb lead after about an 18 month diversion into Scruggs and old-time 3 finger style. Before that, I played clawhammer and then a mixed 2 finger style. This time I decided to have a go at pure TFTL style and not mix them up. The advantage I am finding with this is that it eliminates all ambiguity about which finger to use on which string so I don't have to think about this aspect at all and can concentrate on other aspects of my playing. With the mixed 2 finger style, I frequently ran into the problem of getting used to playing a phrase with one digit and then, if I inadvertently played a note with the other digit it would then throw me completely off because my fingers would then be in the wrong position for the next note. The other thing I have noticed is that if you play either thumb lead or index lead, you are going to have to get used to having a very busy thumb that is capable of fluently dropping to any string other than the first. If you try to get around this by bringing up the index, you gain a tiny amount of effort at the price of then having your index often in the wrong position for the next note, as well as introducing the aforementioned ambiguity. It also makes it much harder to keep up a driving, rolling style of playing that can sound quite like Scruggs if you want it to (by using TTI instead of TIM for the forward roll). So my observation is that both the pure index lead and pure thumb lead styles have their advantages (index lead being more like clawhammer) but that the characteristics of thumb lead in particular are lost if you don't actually stick to the style. That's my 2 cent's worth at this moment in my journey!
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