I’ve got another thrilling technique challenge for you - to spend 5-10min/day improving your strength, stretch, stamina, and flying fingers with some fun music based exercises.
And I need your help to make sure these exercises are non-stupid and actually get you good results! So I’m running a 30-day challenge through February - if you wanna participate…
just spend ~10 mins a day (however many days a week you practice is fine) playing along with the tracks and tabs below
let me know what improvements you see in your playing by the end, plus approx how much time you put into them
grab a before/after video if you want to see proof of your progress!
Here’s a rough quickie lesson where I walk you through the exercises and explain how to get the most out of them:
I read the title for the first exercise as “Exercise. 1,132 BPM” and my heart almost stopped. It’s 16h10 here in France. I guess the morning coffee has worn off. I’ll give this a go.
I thought I’d check out the Forum today and found this topic. As an absolute beginner and old phart, this could definitely help me. After having my soul crushed by the Billie Jean Benchmark I was looking for additional technique practice. I’ll have my wife video my first attempt and see what happens at the end of February. After all, this video can’t be any worse then my Benchmark attempt. Now back to Module 05.
Okay so one more thing; my inner nerd is screaming at me that because I’m in the middle of module 5 of B2B and I’ll be continuing through the course, that it might screw up the data and feedback that I give you from doing these exercises. So, you know, that. Hope it’s not an issue. I’ll keep a practice diary so at least my useless data will be accurate.
as a first timer learning the basics through the course ill do these every day and see how it goes. Also the is there any chance of getting the backing tracks so I could practice a little longer with them? If not that’s ok
I’ve been looking for some kind of practice that I can do daily that would help with my technique, rather than my general noodling and variations of arsing about. So big thanks for putting this together @JoshFossgreen it’s good to have something to do with purpose. First observations are; Exercise 1 - I seem to be okay with this and it’s not hugely challenging. Exercise 2 - I’ve managed to do this on the G string up to the 4th fret so being the genius that I am I thought “why not repeat this on all the other strings?” which was where it all fell apart, particularly the E string. Advice: Be less Stuart. Exercise 3 - Loved this. I started playing bass originally because of Steve Harris and this was a great workout. After 5 minutes I could definitely feel it so this will be very helpful. Exercise 4 - You’re a terrible human and I hate you. It turns out that staring angrily at your fingers doesn’t make them do what you want. Maintaining the stretch on the A string was a challenge as my fingers wanted to bunch up when they were all against the fret board. Oh, and about 30 seconds in I realised I was grinding my thumb against the back of the neck as though I was trying to push nail through it. Definitely the hardest of the four for me and I’ll see how the next thirty days helps me improve. I’d love to hear of other peoples day one experiences.
I’ll give this a go.
