Why Tosin Abasi Threw Away the Pick

Every revolution in guitar starts with a limitation that suddenly becomes unbearable. For Tosin Abasi, it was the pick itself.

"The guitar is such a capable instrument when it comes to sounding like full-blown music," he told Reverb. "When you start playing classical and jazz you realise — whoa, I can sit alone and produce what sounds like full-blown multiple-part music on this neck. And a lot of that comes from abandoning the pick momentarily and learning how to use each finger. Then you really can do independent lines — you can create harmony and melody at the same time."

The maths gets vivid when he explains what an open right hand means on an extended-range instrument: "It's almost like you have four picks in a way. Especially on an extended-range guitar — you can target certain notes and do clusters of higher-pitched notes. If you're picking, you're either having to skip strings or strum all the way through. It just makes the neck with eight strings on it a little less utilizable."

The famous thump didn't arrive from theory. It arrived from a bandmate. "I was in a band with this guy Ivan Brewer, who is a phenomenal bassist — he studied with the Wootens, so he knew how to do all that double-thumping stuff. Hearing him do it all the time I was like, dude, you've got to show me. Why limit yourself to one stroke per thumb when you can do the double thing?"

For players trying to steal the technique, Abasi is specific about where it falls apart: "What's counterintuitive is the upstroke with the thumb. I feel like that is the crux of the technique." His practice prescription is beautifully brutal — mute everything: "Sometimes it's easier to develop the technique if you pick a string and mute it, because it's so percussive that you're primarily concerned with how hard you're hitting and how consistent it sounds."

And the quote to pin above your practice space: "The left hand knows more than the right, especially if you're used to picking all the time. I focused on getting the right hand down, and once that was there I could plug in all this stuff I knew on my left hand."