Hail @terb!
I got some listens in.
Very niiiice, sir.
If you’re in the lesson room (which - for me at my local guitar shop - is, literally, an underground room with brick walls, surrounded by weird decrepit gear, with ceilings too low for me to stand all the way up) with me, here’s what I would say:
- great use of space. The line breathes, leaves plenty of room for the keys and drums - it fits the vibe real nice.
- You listened and prepared well - the chord progression is followed nicely and the kick drum pattern is locked into
- Well composed - everything has a nice back-and-forth flow. The bass line is clear, and the embellishments add to everything nicely.
I would be a proud and satisfied teacher.
At this point we would probably go out and you would buy me coffee in celebration. Possibly also a croissant.
THEN… we’d come back to the bass cave and I would add the following:
First - expand that vocabulary! There’s nothing wrong with the choices you’ve made or the lines you played (nice rhyme there, eh?) but I’d like to hear more phrasing and choices that sound like you’ve played 1,000,000 Cmin pentatonic bass lines, and you’ve built up a sweet and solid arsenal of bass ideas in that space. The lines, as they are, sound a little bit stiff. Perfect if it was a Devo song, but in this style, they stand out.
Second (and closest to my heart) - you (like myself, and countless other excitable bassists) are tending to rush when you play a more exciting or moving line.
It is pretty subtle, and I’m only jumping on it because it is such a easy tendency to ignore, and such a terrible tendency to let grow. Here’s a rather long bit about playing fills, embellishments, solos, melodic connections, improvisations of any kind in a bass line:
Never ever ever be THINKING about what you’re playing while you’re playing it. You have to be thinking long-term, already hearing (in perfect, grooving rhythm) where you’re landing, and what will follow.
It’s like we have this switch in our pattern brains that goes like this:
bass line
bass line
bass line
OTHER THING!!!
bass line
bass line
bass line…
OTHER THING!!!
And every time the other thing shows up, our ears go to what we’re doing, our fingers get excited, and things move out of groovy phrasing and go into “I’m excited about what I’m doing” phrasing.
Musically what happens is we rush those phrases. We’re thinking about what we’re doing, and our vision is (usually) from the beginning of our fill to the end of it, rather than a smooth and clear vision across the width and breadth of the groove.
So: When you are developing the bass line and when you reach for the fill - don’t think about the fill. Think about the time and groove behind the fill, and think about the next bar, and how relaxed and groovy it will be.
…I could go on and on and on about this - it’s something I’m working on currently myself, so it’s at the forefront of my brain!
That’s a long and exhaustive way of saying - relax and focus on the groove, and don’t worry about the fills… And if this seems antithetical with my first comment (expand the vocabulary) I promise it isn’t.
If you have a wide and deep vocabulary, when you’re more fluent, you don’t have to worry about each individual word - you can focus more on the main idea. Same with bass lines.
Broaden your vocabulary so that you don’t have to think about your vocabulary so much when you reach for a bass line variation.
And… don’t rush those fills.
It’s all about the groooooove.
Great job, @terb. Hope this helps.
thank you very much Gio for the backing track !
But all good, just hearing how others hear this now familiar tune, and dream up basslines is just a good experience.
