Hi everyone,
I’ve justed started my bass journey with bazzbuss. I’m wondering how I should go about working on my technique. A bit more than a year ago I started learning the classical guitar, and there I practice technique (mostly arpeggio patterns, scales, right hand string walks with various fingering combinations, rasgueados, hammer-ons, pull-offs) in addition to the pieces I’m learning. How should I approach that for the bass? What would be appropriate for a beginnner?
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I think a lot of this still applies, except maybe the rasqueados. Though I bet that would sound cool.
I’m not good at practicing so I’ll let someone else chime in, but I’m here for the replies too!
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“Technique” is soooo massive. Don’t stress yourself. Don’t overthink it.
I’d say pick maybe 2 exercises that really focus on the two most fundamental things that you want to get down and sprinkle them in (one plucking focused and the other fretting focused) - potentially as warmups.
I would often (and sometimes still do) start up with a warmup just plucking rhythms. Put on a drum track. Pluck different very basic rhythms on open strings. Moving across all the strings.
Whole notes, half notes, quarter notes.
Practice playing RESTS as well as playing notes. So like with quarter notes I will go:
- Even quarters on all four beats.
- Quarter note on beat one, rest all other beats.
- Quarter note on beat two, rest all others… (etc. for 3 and 4)
- Quarter on 1 & 2… 1 & 3… 1 & 4… 2 & 3… 2 & 4… 3 & 4.
- Then Rest on 1… rest on 2… 3… 4
This is both good technique training and a good warmup to do for 5-10 minutes at the start of practicing. Over time, gradually increase the BPM of your backing track.
Then I’d do another exercise that focuses on fretting technique. I got a lot of mileage out of this Bass Buzz exercise.
Beyond that - do the Bass Buzz course. That will cover 80% of what you need. And start learning simple songs you can play along with because playing along with songs is FUN and gives a massive sense of accomplishment. It also helps you track your progress as you learn more songs of greater complexity.
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Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind and I’ll do the course. For guitar (electric and classical) there are these books with guided workouts, technique practice routines. Do similar things exist for the bass. Are there good ones someone could recommend?
The Bass Buzz - Beginner to Badass course will cover the territory you would get from a book like that, but better.
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Ok. So I’ll probably do it like this, 5-10 minutes warm up with exercises similar to those I do on the guitar, then the lessons, and maybe work on songs if possible.
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A nice, simple exercise to build fretting finger strength and form that I’ve been shown by a few bass teachers is a chromatic exercise.
You start on your lowest string, first finger on the first fret and play up chromatically 4 frets, one finger per fret. Then do the same on the A string and so on. Once you get to the fourth finger, fourth fret on the G string, you reverse and go back down. Then you move up one fret (first finger on the second fret) and continue.
Do this to a metronome or drum track, starting with 8th notes at 60 bpm (or slower if that’s too fast for you). As you get it down, slowly increase speed over time, say +10 bpm.
This builds finger strength, independence, and form.
And yeah, like you said, scales (major, minor, pentatonic, blues) and arpeggios of those scales are great exercises to do too. Start with one octave, then do as many octaves as you can going up the neck.
Do all these in time with a metronome or drum track, so you’re practicing your timing at the same time.
Edit: Oh, and you can also learn and practice different shapes of all those scales and arpeggios. Starting on the first finger, starting on the second finger, and starting on the fourth finger. It’s going to help your finger strength, and getting all those shapes under your fingers will really help you in playing going forward.
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If you’re going to do anything for technique, you always want to know why you’re doing it. Doing exercises just because everyone does the is a waste of time.
At the beginning it’s important to work on left and right hand muting, string crossing up down with index and ring fingers and decide if you’re going to use alternating or raking/economy plucking for descending. I spent a lot of time just plucking open strings and working on muting. It’s helpful to play with headphones so you can hear if your muting needs work and it’s good to record audio/video of yourself so you can watch and listen to critique yourself. If you need to work on finger independence, the spider exercise is good for that. You can work on major and minor scales and arpeggios using the 3 main positions/shapes starting on the 1st, 2nd and 4th fingers.
I don’t like to spend a lot of time on “practicing” techniques, I prefer to play so I play as much as I can and when I identify a weakness or have tough parts of a song to get through, I work on those. I might slow something down to 50% to get through it, it might take me weeks or even months but ideally, you don’t want to practice your mistakes. I have some songs I like to use for string crossing and some that use a lot of open strings which require some additional muting techniques.
This is my basic philosophy for improving on anything:
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B2B covers most things, starting from the real basics, and building from that. The course is progressive, building skills and confidence. To be honest, it’s got everything you need to get going … by the mid point I was looking for a band, by the end, I’d actually formed a band!
Rock on 
Denis—
Greetings, fellow classical-guitar-studying guy!
A technique method I’ve found that resembles what we’re used to is the Bass Hanon, published by Hal Leonard:
It’s quite like a Pumping Nylon for bassists, and may very well be the kind of thing you’re looking for.
Another one, also from Hal Leonard, is Bass Aerobics:
While Bass Hanon contains several performance-style exercises, Bass Aerobics strives to make every exercise in the book musical, in contrast to the hanon’s more academic bent. I prefer the hanon’s approach, but your mileage may vary, as they say.
Just to prove I’m not on Hal Leonard’s payroll, I’ll recommend one more, independently published by a Frenchman named Sebastien Jean, Solos for Bass Guitar:
Mr. Jean writes in the book that the “Preparatory Exercises” chapter isn’t a method, and he’s correct, but that chapter does contain several technique exercises that classical guitarists will immediately recognize, including use of the thumb and anular finger, free stroke, and other classical techniques. The book is available via Amazon because of course it is. His webpage has audio of all the pieces in the book; you’ll note pieces by Carulli, Coste, and Sor among them.
Lastly, many of the technique exercises you do for the classical guitar can be adapted to the bass without much trouble, especially fretting hand exercises. Dig into your classical methods and be creative.
Enjoy, and I wish you success…
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Looking back from where I am now, I’d say that right hand technique is more important ranging from beginners to intermediate. Take your time, slow the song down and really put your right hand in the right place.
We tend to focus on the left hand on technical stuffs but usually what holds us back is the time it takes for the right hand to catch up, at least in my case. Your left hand can handle 16th fills relatively easy after a few pass but it usually takes right hand twice the time to facilitate that properly.
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The English version just cost me 21,60 € including shipping and taxes.
One of the reasons I ordered a fretless 5 string from Lignum (due early April (fingers crossed)) was a comment by John Myung, bassist for Dream Theater, that the 5 string bass has basically the same range as a cello, but has a low B vs. a low C. I’m interested to see if Sébastien Jean uses a 5-string tab for the cello pieces.
Cello range
