I’m worried. I have a problem just playing a riff - the same riff - over and over. I lose attention, get distracted and botch it. I switch my attention from the frets, to plucking and screw up the left hand or vice-versa. I start thinking about the next chord and mess up the one I’m on.
I just started on e-bass, but decades ago I played upright. (I had to give it up b/c it interfered with my drinking. Sober now, I have the itch, but not going to try upright again.) I remember walking was ok, but ostinato was a problem then too.
Should I forget the whole thing and get a mouth harp? Suggestions welcome.
Repeating motifs are harder than they have the right to be, as you say, it’s so easy to lose concentration! I tend to fall over when I start thinking about the next note. There are a number of songs we play in my band, where I have to get into autopilot and stop thinking, letting the muscle memory take over.
The other challenge ostinato is that, often, you’re not actually moving your hand an awful lot, not changing position. For me, it can start to cramp. Practice and repetition are the solution here, building stamina.
I’m not not quite sure they fit the definition of ostinato exactly, but the last couple songs I’ve been learning, Brick House and We’re Not Gonna Take It, have very repetitive riffs. For WNGTI, as soon as I settle into the pattern it changes into a quick bridge (not 100% sure that’s the correct term in this case) that almost always catches me off guard and then it’s right back into it again. For Brick House, the main riff changes just slightly just about every time and it’s difficult keeping track of which is which.
Basically, I think it comes down to just practicing it enough that it starts becoming muscle memory so your brain can focus on something else (like reading the music to see the changes coming).
I hear you. I love the blues, and a lot of their lines are very repetitive, at least in classic blues, thinking of Mannish Boy. Or even Motown like Papa was a Rolling Stone. I find the challenge in hitting the pocket dead on every bar.
This is indeed an experience thing and a practice thing.
For the transistions into and out of bridges etc, play a bar or two ahead and into the change over and over, slowly at first, so your hands do it and it alone on autopilot, then put the rest of the tune ahead of it back. Also, note vocals or drums etc, any cue that will tell you it is coming up, and mezmorize it.
Ostinati come in all shapes and difficulty levels. Find one that is fairly straightforward to fret and pluck and focus on the consistency and the timing. Do that at a reduced speed (i.e., slow), with a metronome, and just play that ostinato riff over and over again, checking your fretting, plucking and timing.Then slowly crank up the bpms.
Billy Jean is a good one, but quite challenging. As is this one, where it’s all about sustaining the timing for more than 5 minutes or so:
PS: soon, the hardest part of ostinati will be to “count”, i.e., hear the cues for when to change to another part of the song
When I get stuck like this, I move on to something else and come back to the problem riff later. It’s as if the brain/hand coordination sorts itself out during a rest break,
. If it’s the latter then welcome to the club.
