I am diving headfirst into the world of bass guitar thanks to the Beginner to Badass course. It’s been a blast so far, and I have already noticed improvement, but am hungry for more!! I am hoping to tap into the collective wisdom of this awesome community to take my playing to the next level.
I am currently tackling a few specific challenges;
Plucking Perfection; I’m working on finding my groove with plucking. My hand tends to get fatigued quickly, and my playing is a bit inconsistent. Any exercises or techniques to build a strong, relaxed plucking hand would be a game-changer.
Hand Sync Issues; Getting my fretting and plucking hands to work together smoothly is a challenge, especially when speeding things up. I’m looking for drills to improve finger independence and coordination.
Slap Bass Struggles; Slap bass is so cool, but I’m having trouble getting started. Any tips for beginners on nailing those slaps and pops?
Crafting a Practice Plan; I’m dedicated to daily practice, but I need help creating a well-rounded routine. A mix of technique, theory, and learning songs would be ideal.
It’s been said many times, but it bears repeating because it’s true. If you really want to improve all the items you listed, slow down, practice, and repeat.
It seems simple—for very good reason: it is. That’s not to say it’s quick, easy or magic, because it definitely isn’t.
But learning and mastering playing techniques and music theory takes time and effort.
If you find you have trouble with a particular piece of a bass line, fingering technique, or timing, isolate that part of the line and work it out as slowly as you need to get it right.
It doesn’t matter if you have to slow it down to a death march. It’s just intended to get it under your fingers.
Then practice the hell out it until it’s totally under your fingers and between your ears.
Everything in bass is all possible. You just have to put in the time and effort to own it.
You might have already seen them, but @JoshFossgreen has a couple of great slap and pop videos on his YouTube channel with more useful tips and drills to practice.
I’m still baaaad, but trying to improve gradually with regular practice
At the moment my routine goes a little like this. Finger warm up, then I choose a pattern (etude) like thing and work that repetitively through the cycle of 4ths or lately I’ve been trying to learn chords so I’ll work those through a scale (different than the day before). Then I work on songs I’ve learned and finally I spend time transcribing a new song I want to learn.
Basically warm up.
Finger technique, fretboard work mixed with some theory.
Songs
New song.
Our brain is quite primitive, it takes quite a bit of time to make the connection to things. Taking things at a slower tempo allow for proper techniques and muscle memory to developed for that particular technique, then rinse and repeat and on to the next.
If you are experiencing hand fatigue you are most likely fretting and plunging too hard and/or supporting your bass with your left hand. You need to learn to fret the note exactly enough to make a solid tone, no more no less. This teaches you a lot of techniques you’ll need in the future. Like ghost notes, burping for example. All comes from learn the varying degrees of fretting pressures.
Boy, I envy you, I wish I can go back and relearn things for the first time.
Well not really, I’m already doing it with my left handed stringing upside down playing. It’s a brain teaser for sure.
My upbringing keeps me from burping, but I noticed that I do fret to hard lately.
Usually I like to have a very low string action height, but I pluck harder now and that leads to fret noises. So I needed to increase string action height, resulting in the need to press harder on the fretting side. No light touch anymore
I didn’t mention farting notes. I use it all of the time on the bass. Sometimes while playing,
All bassists seem to want super low string action, but very few can actually benefits from it. Medium low is plenty low for most bassists. I have very light touch both fretting and plugging hands, I don’t like super low action. It limits the expressive option as my Kung Fu is not at that level yet. Plus
My shed is not 24/7 climate controlled and neck movement correction is not fun when I play multiple basses in a session. Like everything else if you choose an extreme setup for something there’s no room for the margin of errors and you become that version of a person who’s bother by the setups. I’m trying hard not to be that person at any cost,
Welcome, @liviacaruso!
I was looking at your bio and had some challenges parsing what you wrote and to see it in the context of music or bass playing. It read a bit like part of a CV and part of a job application… what really threw me off was how you went from 1st person to 2nd person in your two sentences… Anyway, I hope all is well and that you are not a bot/AI of sorts
This is both essential and very, very hard! One way out of this is to work with a teacher, who will help you design a practice plan.
Otherwise, FWIW, I made an overview for myself listing all the potentially important categories (this is an expanded version of a slightly simpler scheme I had found somewhere else). For me personally, I have expanded this even more in a third level, where I list all kinds of resources I have gathered from the internet, books, suggestions from people here etc. This could include videos from Josh Fossgreen, SBL, TalkBass, Rich Brown and many, many more, but also playalongs, backing tracks, groove apps, or other little bits found here and there.
Also, it is (of course) impossible to practice ALL of these on a daily basis. So, when you design a daily/weekly plan, you pick perhaps from three of these categories for each day, and either change it up day by day or week by week.
Anyway, hope this is somewhat useful for you!?! Good luck!
Simply playing basslines from your favorite bassists/bands is so helpful. Use tabs or transcribe You’ll learn a lot of technique and start to notice patterns.
If you want to go deeper, you can look at what the bassist is actually doing in terms of theory rather than just playing the tune.
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Thanks in advance for sharing your insights!!!
I’m already doing it with my left handed stringing upside down playing. It’s a brain teaser for sure.
