I started learning in Sept 2022 with B2B and have improved a lot since those first few days and since finishing B2B. As part of my practice, I choose songs I like (not too hard) and slow them way down like half speed. Once I get it down and work up to normal tempo, I make fretting mistakes non stop-- pinky slipping off the string and other fingers not positioned as well as they should be. Also tensing up the hand and shoulder.
Current examples are Are You Gonna Be My Girl (Jet) and Upside Down (Diana Ross). I’ve practiced enough to know the notes looking at the tabs on the screen and can play them slowed down (the Jet song is harder). But Upside Down at normal speed, and my hand is a mess.
Is it just a matter of continued practice at slower speeds then gradually increase?
It’s sometimes disheartening that I mess up so much when playing at the normal speed and makes me wonder how others with more experience find learning a new song. Do you still make rookie fretting errors if a new song is too fast for you?
You have to have a “sleep break” between learning sessions to learn fast. (It can sound laughable, but it is not. It’s absolutely crucial aspect of the process.) Two 30-minute focused sessions in two days are much more beneficial to your progress in learning (be it a song or anything else) than 1-hour session in 1 day. Also, you have to actually learn to progress. What do I mean by that? There’s a learning and “learning”. I remember how I was able to spend a couple of hours on my bass without actually improving anything. Yes, I learned a bit of the “note sequence” in a song, but I learned in a way that the next note was actually the only thing I knew. I didn’t analyze my playing in a way that I would be able to recognize what were the causes of my issue. (“I make fretting mistakes non stop-- pinky slipping off the string and other fingers not positioned as well as they should be. Also tensing up the hand and shoulder.”) Only after this focused, holistic approach, you can recognize for example that your issue with your pinky isn’t your speed or dexterity, but the unnatural way how you place your thumb on the neck for a particular set of notes, your tensing up in hand shoulder can be just the way how your bass is interacting with your body and unnatural angles you contort yourself into, etc.)
In my opinion, the most important thing to speed up the process is to “learn to learn”, which is actually really not that much fun. My two cents.
The easy answer would be: perhaps you increased the speed too quickly!?
Also, “forcing” it by practicing the same song or part of it over and over is not helpful (in my opinion). As @wellbi also alluded to: you need to step away from a tune for a while and do something else and then come back to it again in day or two (or more) and you’d be surprised how much your body remembers.
Finally, if there is some fundamental challenge with your fretting technique, you might want to look at specific exercises to address those challenges, independent of a specific song.
But, yes, at every level there will be songs that will challenge you and fretting mistakes will be made if you think you can just play it at regular speed. We all need to slow down things to properly learn them.
(By the way, I would encourage you to learn those songs by heart. Having to check scores or tab while trying to fret/play increases the chances for playing sloppily, in my experience. Of course, as always, YMMV).
I am going to say yes it is easier, but it isn’t skill at bass per se that helps so much as how you start to understand song structure and how they fit together. Songs generally are made of several repeating for different parts of the song - intro, verse, chorus, bridge, etc - and once you learn to recognize that and how they relate it makes learning overall songs easier., because you learn natural ways to break the song down for study and practice.
I would reflect on what you have accomplished in a few months and be proud! All of this takes time and you are still new at this. Cut yourself some slack
That’s also how I understood the question initially. But, I believe @StartedAt48 was more talking about the technical challenges, i.e., actually playing and fretting new songs. (I could be wrong though )
Muscle memory is a tricky thing. You can try and fail for a long long time, and then one day it just clicks and feels like you’ve been doing it for years.
Learning slow 60-75% is great for muscle memory once that down, you’d want to practice in the 90s% that’s when the feels and the groves comes alive. When you announce yourself ready there’s one more step that would seal the deal on that song. At least for me, I’d play it faster usually 115%-120%. I’d play that a few dozen times, struggling all the way of course, lol, but when I go back to normal speed I’m much more relaxed. My hands and fingers feels like they know what’s going to happen in the future and already there before it happens.
OP, to answer your question, yes. This past week at my bass lesson, we finished up with what we were working on, and decided to start a new song. We picked Heard It On the Grapevine. Looked at the tabs in Songsterr, tried them out, then we played the song at full speed (inexpertly on my part). A few months ago we would be slowing it down. Granted, it’s not a complicated song but I got my first pass in in 10 minutes. So yes it does get faster. I am an average bass player if anything to boot.
You have a lot of great advice here I won’t repeat, I will just add advice from Moametal. She was asked once when she steps on stage in front of an arena does she get nervous. She said no, it’s just practice, practice, and more practice, and by the time she is on stage her body knows what to do without thought.
I never usually play at super slow speeds when I learn. Obviously tricky riffs need to be broken down one note at a time, but once I have the notes down I just play it at normal speed until it sounds proper. If I can’t play it at normal speed then it’s either something too complex for my skill level, or something that will take a lot more time to figure out.
Also, break the song down into smaller bite sized pieces and learn one chunk at a time. This will help you master the song as you play through it time and time again, each time adding another piece. Eventually all the pieces will come together and you’ve just learned a whole song.
I should also add that I transcribe and memorize every song I play. The transcription process is when I play the song one note at a time, so I guess I do play slowly in that regard. Sight reading tabs only works for me if the song is just a bunch of chugging, way too hard to sight read & play intricate lines for me.
Depending on the complexity of the song, the transcription process usually takes me a day or two. I practice for another day or two and by that point I have pretty much nailed it. When I say it takes me a day or two, I mean the entire day or two. Probably all together I spend 20-30 hours on any given song.
The only secret is time and practice.
Oh also that Jet song is not easy. There’s a ton of ghost notes and rhythm changes/variations in that riff. That’s a great song to work up to but not one I would expect someone to be able to play that’s only been at it for less than a year.
Howdy Started! Yes, you’re experiencing the same thing I did when I first started playing. It night help if you pick some easier songs to begin with. Check out the Rolling Stones “Almost Hear You Sigh” and “Anyone Seen My Baby.” Both are slower placed and easy to play. It took me several months to notice my fingering was improving. Hang in there, you’ll get it. There are tunes out there in the 60-70 beat per minute range with minimal note changes. Others will probably throw in other song names as well.
If you want to play along with a song even starting out, some of the old blues standards are ideal. A good one to start with is Mannish Boy by Muddy Waters. It has a good tempo and a simple bass line. A-D-A-C-A and just fall into the groove and play along
Classic bass riff. Same progression as Bad to the Bone which is in a different key - E-A-E-G-E
I am a newbie who is trying to learn a number of songs quickly.
I have found that dissecting the song seems to help.
By that I mean a chord chart helps with understanding tab and viceversa.
My example at present is Light My Fire, I had all sort of issues getting my head around this. there are about 3 different patterns in the parts and they are a little different with Maj and Min chords.
Finally it clicked that they are just using triads.
Yes a facepalm moment but the rhythm and way the tab was written hid that.
Also sleep and breaks helps.
I am a big believer that understanding what you have learned happens in the subconcious as well as when actively learning.
Pretty much, yes. Slow it down enough that you can play it without mistakes, then speed it up about 5% and do the same and keep increasing until you’re at 100% (or more). 80% might seem like it’s almost full speed but it’s still 25% faster to 100% and that can be a big jump! If you increase the speed and start making too many mistakes, slow it down more again.
At the beginning, almost everything you learn in a song will be new to you but as you progress you’ll find that there are similar elements to songs like a root, 5th, octave, ascending/descending root/5ths or root/4th. Think of it like learning any language, in the beginning it’s tough to read a book, you have to sound every word out but after a while you can recognize words just by looking at them. There are also a lot of things that you need to more consciously think about for your left and right hands like muting and moving between strings that you won’t have to really think about later.
Once you have a better trained ear, it will become easier to memorize (and transcribe) songs too because you don’t have to memorize all the notes individually, you just have to remember the melody and the intervals. I found it tremendously helpful to think more about what the bass line was doing than what note/fret/string i needed to play next… and that was tough because i came from a more classical background where i played everything from sheet music so my skill for memorizing songs were very poor.
Sure i’ll still make mistakes, some days are just bad and i screw up easy songs because it’s early/late but it doesn’t matter. Sometimes i have to relearn songs i have’t played in a while.
Sometimes like the other day, i haven’t played my 5 string in a while and it’s just a mess for the first 20 mins I think it’s always good to have something that’s really hard to work on, to push you to improve your skills; it help you identify the areas that you need to work on and then you can do some exercises for that. There are a few songs i’ve been working on for about a year. I hadn’t been working that hard to improve the difficult parts, i just sucked my way through them but now i’m working on finishing them up which is quite satisfying.
To me, songs are something to enjoy and a way to improve my skills. I haven’t taken the time to memorize most of the songs i play regularly, many of them are easy songs that I sight read from tab and work on my playing without looking at the fretboard; it’s like going to the gym and running on the treadmill, you just have to put the time in.
It’s just part of the process, I told my significant other today that this will take a lot more practice than I thought, lots of “unfun” work to get this to click. It’s a bit disheartening but at the same time, I think with proper training and practice I can become a decent bass player. Not at the levels of idols, but enough for me.
I also agree with the sleep break approach is better for me; I’m started to learn Bombtrack from RATM today and I have the intro basically down, not at full speed though. But after about 40 mins, I started to mess up constantly and decided to let it be. I’m curious later tonight or tomorrow how it will sit.
I’m at the almost 2 year mark and I still struggle with this. For me, I start slow and once I get it right, I get excited and it’s difficult to keep it slow until I really have it down because I still get that giddy kick of “oh hey! I can’t believe I’m playing _______!”
I’m not a newbie, but feel like a very slow journey and maybe getting closer to being intermediate.
One thing I don’t do anywhere near enough is try to play songs. I can say that the more I practice techniques, riffs etc or just general practice, the easier it is to start learning a song. For example, before I understood chords and where intervals are , I just saw a bunch of notes. Now I see/hear these in songs and I can start to learn them quicker.
Some awesome tips here, thanks to all that have shared.
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I think it’s always good to have something that’s really hard to work on, to push you to improve your skills; it help you identify the areas that you need to work on and then you can do some exercises for that. There are a few songs i’ve been working on for about a year. I hadn’t been working that hard to improve the difficult parts, i just sucked my way through them but now i’m working on finishing them up which is quite satisfying.