How many of you know the fretboard cold?

She’s my favorite of the three, and she does a cool wordle for bass thing on her Instagram.

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Makes sense.

I’m recognizing a lot of patterns on the bass, which is why I love its symmetry. But, I don’t want to rely on patterns solely.

I’m in awe of how much more musical I feel on the bass, so being able to see the fretboard like a pianist see the keys can only help push me further.

I’ve been doing something along the same lines that I got from Ari Cap’s book. I like this version of it a bit better though and will likely switch over. IMHO, setting it to a metronome or drum beat is the secret sauce for this type of exercise. I can sit there and draw out the notes on a fretboard. Takes a few minutes, but it’s easily done. And sure, that’s useful.

But having to play the right note on the right fret and right string, with just a bit of time pressure from having to play it in time (at whatever speed) does something to really focus your brain. And it’s in a similar context, so hopefully next time you’re playing and need to think fast about where a note is, well, you’ve already been doing that. Specificity is the physical exercise principle, and I firmly believe it applies here as well.

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I agree. The “pressure” component is key!

Having to look for the next note position to keep up is a whole other element that is so useful IMO.

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It is also super important to say the note name before or as you are playing it. I know it sounds (and feels) a bit stupid, but it reinforces the connection between “this is a Bb” and “here is the location where Bb is played on the fretboard” in the brain!

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Kind of like re-writing your notes by hand.

Stays in the brain better!

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I play live a few times a months, and usually some guests (customers) want to come up and jam as in treating us like a Karaoke band, lol. Usually, we just play them in original keys, but most times we quickly found out that it’s way way too high for them. Sometimes we’d drop the keys 3 times in one song. Knowing the notes on the finger board is essential. One guy has never sound so good singing (in the wrong key) ended up singing a few songs by request and tipped us $500. That was nice. We made his night, :joy:

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Yeah, if you think that’s unusual, take a look at the UTA bass player from the link below. Generally i’m not a fan of watching someone else watch youtube videos but this one at least provides some explanation, so here it goes.

[EDIT] In case you don’t want to wait for the guy the figure out how many fingers are involved, it’s 4.

seen a lot in jazz guys. sometimes i think that gwizdala uses his thumb more then his fingers (although he’s also a thumb mute guy).

Come to think about it, wasn’t that what the old style of a finger ramp below the strings was for? You held onto it with the fingers and picked with the thumb?

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originally yes. no one on earth did that, however :rofl:

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Not a ramp but a finger rest. Well it’s was designed by Leo Fender, he doesn’t play any instruments. He imagined that’s how bassists would use them.

This is finger ramp



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I just called it that as I figured it was doing the same thing but in reverse ie. an anchor for fingers instead of an anchor for thumb. And yes I know the finger ramp does a little more by stopping the plucking fingers going too deep.

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Ah, I was wondering what that strange thingy on my new bass does! Maybe to install an ActionCam for influencers???!

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@markjsmith had a video about the topic, suggested learning notes on the fretboard via each string through the circle of 4ths… IE: C F Bb Eb Ab Db Gb B E A D G.

I’ve been using that with some success, but still have to think about it. I’ll have it down cold in the future if I keep doing it a couple times a week.

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It blew my mind when I realized that going from the E string to the G string on any fret, the notes are always in the order of the circle of fourths.

It should come as no surprise since the bass is tuned in fourths, nonetheless it was revelatory!

image

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Well, I feel like an idiot… I knew that but didn’t KNOW that until you spelled it out. Damn! Well, that’ll make my fretboard memorization easier going forward

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I have the fretboard pretty much memorized and I never really studied it or put a lot of effort into learning it…it just sort of falls into place after enough time.

There’s a lot of shortcuts to learning the fretboard though. The 5th fret on every string is the same note as the open string below it (higher in pitch). The 12th fret is the same note as the open string just up an octave. You can find the same note (octave) down two strings and up two frets. Once those easy notes are memorized it’s pretty easy to find your way around. Not saying you shouldn’t study the fretboard but I never did and it worked out OK for me!

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Don’t know it cold, but made major strides in the last year and am in a decent place. It didn’t click for me until I figured out a way to practice that wasn’t totally mind-numbing. I couldn’t stand drills because my mind would drift during the exercise, and then I’d just lose focus as to what I’m doing.

I needed to connect it to playing music. So I used this book: Amazon.com (I got it from the library). And for a couple of months, I would tee up 5-6 of the songs on YouTube and play ONLY the root notes of the Beatles song along with the track, using this book as a guide (it has the chords). The key part of the exercise was restricting myself to certain areas of the fretboard for a song (can only use notes on certain parts of the fretboard or on a single string, etc.). This was a game changer for me.

Of course you don’t need to use this exact book. But I found it effective for the following reason: the chords are very clearly laid out on the same page (limited page turning during the song, focus on the fretboard), it’s cleanly presented (you don’t need sheet music or tab in this instance), it’s easy to cycle through (turn the page, and you’re ready for the next exercise), I do not need to decide “what songs to choose for this exercise,” (just work through the book - it’s all there), I got to explore Beatles songs. It was the fastest from “set-up-to-exercise” with limited barriers for me, too.

Once I finish my current cycle through the book, I’m going to reuse this to learn bass chords and try to play the chords along with the track.

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I think I finally do. I give credit to Mark Smith’s “Simple Steps to Walking Bass”, at one point he has you practice descending arpeggios where the root notes are on the D and G strings. After doing that in all 12 keys (pretty pretty please no Victor Wooten videos :pray: :rofl: ), it all clicked for me.

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