bass players - technique questions inside

[egan.]

Not that I'm defending them, because playing bass like a guitar is one of my pet peeves.
But wouldn't playing softly be better because bass strings oscillate a little more aggressively than guitar strings? It's more prone to being pushed too sharp if picked/plucked harder.

Intellectually my rebuttal to this is that when striking a string over double the thickness and nearly 50% longer you are going to need significantly more force to behind your strike to get the string moving. Granted there is a limit.

Functionally my rebuttal is you will never sound like exodus if you pick like a featherweight.

I also tell my bass players to raise their action a little to get the fret-buzz-to-low-action ratio balanced so that there's more "note" than "clang" from slappy strings.

I like a little clack for fingerstyle. Little of it ends up in the pickups unless you are clacking against the pickups which is an awful sound.