im trying to separate my thumb from the rest of fingers so it can cary a bass line while the other fingers can play the melody. ive been working at it for a while. i cant keep both going at the same time.

does anybody have any advice for learning this?
does thumb independence it eventually come? or do u always have to learn how it all lines up?

Greetings meksicko, yep, after a while you won't even think about your thumb and it will do what your brain wants it to do more or less from patterning. Neat thing the brain...takes over and works in the background (subconscious) doing many things for us through our hands and fingers. I'm relatively new at thumb and finger independence but I set my thumb free early on but I can say it took some work.

My tendancy was to lift the thumb way too high off the strings when moving from say the E6 to the A5 string and back again. Was watching James Taylor on a public tv concert and noticed his thumb working two and even three strings, (E6 through D4) with his thumb. His thumb was barely lifting at all and that's when it hit me. He would thumb the E6 let's say and let his thumb stop on the A5 string before moving back to the E6 or on to the D4 string. Make any sense? I decided it was about timing and reference. James' thumb wasn't lifting so much as it was sort of 'climbing' up and down the several strings if you will.

My main finger independence prob was my pinky. Wow, who knew it wasn't just this useless finger over on one side of the hand till I started finger style ! Now I can move the little finger all over the place ! Anyway, hope some of this helps meksicko, but yes, your thumb will be set free soon...have fun here on the board and in the chatroom.

GuitarZen

hey meksicko. like zen said, if you practice, eventually you just start using your thumb for the low strings without thinking. my thumb used to go everywhere when i first learned finger picking. now that i've practiced (going very very slowly with the picking that is), i switch between hitting the low e string, and the a string alternately with my thumb. sometimes, like when i play chords such as a and d, i play the d string with my thumb as well. i'm just like my brother when i finger pick. i don't use my pinky. i actually use my thumb for 3 of the strings (e, a, and d), and then my first second and third fingers for the other three. you can call me crazy, but it works for me. i also use andy mckee style stuff, such when you take the the strings you wanna play, and pluck 'em all at once. check out one of his vids on youtube and you'll see how he does it.