Bass Mistakes That Are SLOWING You Down

Great video @JoshFossgreen ! I’m guilty of a couple of those mistakes. Thanks for pointing them out so I can work on them.

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So do I @howard but as my old Irish buddy would say “I’m washing a lot more face these days”

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Hah that’s a great way to put it!

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So, for right handed people who play right handed, they fret with the left hand, and pluck with the right. And left handed folks do it the opposite way, if they choose to use left handed instruments. Both use their dominant hand to pluck. Don’t tell me a gazillion right handed bass and/or guitar players are wrong, and should be fretting with their dominant right hand, and plucking with the left! Yet over the years I have heard this logic put forth for why left handers should play right handed instruments. It does not compute. :confused:

As far as Josh’s reasoning for opting to learn and play right handed, it makes sense as far as I’m concerned:

Whatever works! :smile:
Among all the violinists in all the orchestras, a few must be natural left handers who chose to learn a right handed instrument. Josh chose wisely for himself. I wish I had that same point of view, but alas the call to play bass or guitar left handed was too strong with me. Although I can admire the right handed basses discussed in the forums, by playing lefty I don’t get tempted by the vast majority of them, unless they are among the comparatively few available in a left handed version. :person_shrugging:

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And it might not take all of 50 years. Just sayin’, from the other end of the timeline! :wink:
Yeah, I came across my high school senior photo earlier today, and I said, “What the heck happened!” (as if I didn’t know)

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Did that all the time with guitar. Maybe that’s why I never progressed.

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I’m left handed but play right handed. The main driver was I didn’t want to limit my options for future bass purchases.

But I’ve always done the fine motor skill stuff with my left hand. So writing, assembling small parts etc. Whereas my right hand has done the more strength related stuff. Throwing a ball, hitting stuff. So in a way the left hand for fretting as it’s the more delicate / coordinated hand and right for plucking (the more repetitive percussive part) makes sense. But this is probably all bollocks.

Anyway we live in a right handed world and years ago I just gave in and accepted it; unsurprisingly it’s been easier that way :slight_smile:

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Old Josh seems to have been made angry by the rigors of life.

Is that a new dark blue pickguard or trick of the light?

I make all of these mistakes except changing fingering. That has always been one I avoid like a snake.

Josh, man, I’m always impressed with the quality of your videos. Really top notch.

Can Sloth Josh become a thing? Maybe some hairy arm pieces and a sloth hair wig.

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I can’t add 50 years to my face @JoshFossgreen because I’ll probably be dead. So here’s me with 50 years taken off.

That is a sweet jumper!

Oh and noodling, absolutely guilty.

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My problem with guitar - and I am literally stuck in it right now - is the “picking songs that are too hard” one. I’m getting frustrated by it being nigh impossible to play the guitar parts for songs I can play on bass. It’s dumb, but my problem there right now is I am simply not letting myself suck. It’s important to be fine with the fact that you’re terrible at the start.

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Actually… I think for bass, we might be :rofl:

With guitar it makes more sense maybe as quite often you are only strumming subsets of the strings. The right hand requires a fair bit more dexterity on guitar than bass, or so it seems to me.

That’s just not nearly as much a thing with bass, where you are almost always picking or plucking a single string. For me, on bass, the right hand requires a lot less dexterity than the left, and when you think about it, that just makes the standard layout or basses kind of backwards.

My theory for basses being oriented like they are: Leo did it that way because that’s how they made guitars. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t put much more thought in to it than that.

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Why does this picture remind me of Breaking Bad ? :grin:

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He does kind of look like a much younger version of Mike Ehrmantraut there :rofl:

image

Banks really played that role well. Probably the best character in the series, way more interesting than Walter anyway.

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And he looks like me a bit without the head tatts of course :joy:

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The nice thing is I’m not telling myself that I played guitar so I should be able to play bass. I’m starting from the beginning and trying to do it the correct way so I don’t learn any bad habits like I did with guitar.

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Brian Cranston was one of my high school buddies.

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Good points! I stand semi-corrected. I had not thought about those differences between guitar and bass playing (and I know you play both, so you have the experience). But still, I leave it up to each person to figure out what is best.

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:+1:

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I learned to play guitar at 14. I practiced hard and was playing rhythm guitar well by 16. Then I lost the fingertips of my left hand in an accident.

I had always dreamed of playing guitar from the time I was little, so I had a choice to make. Quitting wasn’t an option, so I either had to learn to play lefty, using my right hand to fret chords, or I had to retrain my left hand to work around the handicap.

I tried playing lefty, and my right hand was fine with chording, but I didn’t have the strumming dexterity and natural rhythm in my left hand that I’d had with my right. So I retrained my left hand to finger chords and play lines.

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Yeah, I can see this being a problem. Proper strumming, especially of subsets of the strings, is harder than it looks.

I was really surprised when I discovered that rhythm guitar was a lot harder for me than playing lead lines/solo riffs/etc, which I am also not good at but at least can figure out as it’s at least similar to bass. You would think a bass player would have the rhythm part down but it’s a whole new set of skills for both right and left hand.

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