Just wanted to update on the progress and what’s I’ve noticed so far:
Exercise 1 & 3: I still do these with the practice routine, but I don’t find them that challenging anymore. I’m not bored, because there is always something to focus/develop!
Exercise 2: I’m getting better with the finger rolls, especially the ring/pinky but the progress is hard to see when doing the exercise and can be a little discouraging. I think it’s mainly due to the learning curve needed to get those ‘weak ass’ fingers to co-operate.
When playing/practicing other music I have seen a huge improvement in my ability. I’ve also notice it’s just not the pad of the pinky that is getting developed, but almost half of the finger (where ever the roll occurs), same goes with the other fingers.
This is the riff I’ve been playing that really made me notice the difference with Exercise 2 practice. It encompasses all of the Exercises 1-3 with a bit of difficulty, as multiple fingers are needed to be rolled (ideally), string crossing, as well as rests. You can play this without the rolls, but I can see once developed, the finger rolls make you look pro & save energy. GROOVE IS IN THE HEART BASS TABS by Deee-Lite @ Ultimate-Guitar.Com
Yeah, I really struggle with those finger-rolls as well. I can get Exercise 2 working in a vaguely passable fashion, using my ring finger to roll, but the pinky just doesn’t work well … I can’t work out if it’s a physical limitation or (more likely) bad technique
I’ve been practicing this song lately! Funny, I didn’t think people remembered it anymore, so this is a funny coincidence.
I stack my pinky and ring fingers, as I found it easier when playing this. This bass line is so nice, and it repeats itself the whole song, over and over again. Strangely enough, it doesn’t get as easily stuck in my mind as an ear worm, compared to Seven Nation Army (which sometimes I can’t get out of my head).
I sometimes wonder the same thing. Each person’s fingers are different. My pinky can do some rolls on the G string, but nowhere else, and I think it might be a physical limitation. It’s much easier to do finger rolls with the other fingers.
Ah, that’s interesting - I’m pretty much the same. I can finger-roll with the pinky between the D&G strings, but not on any of the lower strings. I’m still a long way off (I keep getting ringing from the G string) but I can at least make a passable attempt at a finger-roll on the lower strings if I use my ring finger.
Looking at it, it seems I’m not able to get enough bend in the last joint of my pinky So it lays too flat across the neck and I can’t get enough pressure to fret the higher string?
How are you coming along with this? I just started (after being inspired by this discussion). Mine sounds like a string of random notes at 60bpm so far it is a fun challenge though.
Also I love this song. It reminds me of roller skating when I was in elementary school
Same here! I think one reason might be my pinky finger is shorter than the others, and if I wanted to finger roll between the strings D and A, I would have to change completely my hand position, I would have to bring it more forwards and bend my wrist a lot, and the pinky still wouldn’t want to bend that way without laying too flat on the fretboard. All that would also slow me down. So I find it easier to use the ring finger instead, or alternatively practice more the pinky + ring fingers stacking, because it’s something we might need a lot.
I wish we could all meet and compare hands, and see if those who can do this pinky roll have different sized fingers or hands or what. But it seems to me the length of the finger makes it difficult to reach and bend that way.
Cool! It is a fun riff! This song played a lot on the radio and MTV when I was a teen so long ago! We might be resurrecting it now!
I found the notes and score from here:
I took some classes with a local bass teacher this autum (the last one was last Friday) and I told him I started practicing this song. He had forgotten about it, but he figured the notes just by hearing the beginning of the song. When I was leaving, a young teenager boy was arriving for his bass lesson, and the teacher said to him “now you’re going to play Groove is in the Heart; blame Andrea” The boy looked at me with a confused expression on his face. Funny to think of someone from his generation playing Groove is in the Heart.
This song is fast, so I can’t play at the normal tempo, but at least I committed it to memory. That hammer on at the end of each second measure was tricky in the beginning and I’m still practicing it. It is not as hard as I thought it would be. But I might play it perfectly in one moment, and the next time I don’t get it right.
I’m trying to increase speed, but maybe it is a good idea to practice the riff at a slower tempo, get muscle memory, and then try a little faster. I find it easier to practice without the music. It is a fun bass line!
Ha! That would be an interesting comparison. My pinky is also significantly shorter than my others, and I also seem to have an oddly long ring finger - it’s almost as long as my middle finger!
I’ve been starting to have some success finger-rolling with my ring finger, so I’m going to try using that instead of the pinky.
Growing up in that era, every good bass line is imprinted in my memory. There are so many too in all types of genres. My first CD I ever purchased was Black Box - Dreamland. I need to start learning those songs…
Funny thing, my wife sings and we jam out together sometimes since I’ve been learning bass and she was the one who suggested it. It’s one of my favourite bass riffs to play! PS: Labelle - Lady Marmalade is also good too!
I arrived late, so I’m only a few days in. Much appreciate this Josh and your continuing effort to lead us to better technique.
General Comments
Love the backing tracks! The Cars - hehe
I’m wanting to go “painfully slow and precise” - is there a simple way to slow these tracks down?
Might I suggest and alternative to SoundCloud? This is what I see as the ideal playalong for these exercises
A Youtube video with the backing track and Josh playing along for the full length of a practice. Let’s say two mins per exercise. This could be three separate videos (one for each exercise) or all one video.
Josh plays a few rounds of beginner and a few of advanced.
Josh’s playing is panned all the way to the right (or left). So that we can use the balance control to mute Josh’s playing. The backing track plays in both channels (or maybe just the opposite channel of Josh’s playing). The classic jazz playalongs from Jamie Aebersold use this technique to let rhythm players mute parts of the rhythm section when they are playing along.
This accomplishes a couple things:
We can use balance/pan to mute Josh’s playing to hear our mistakes better. I tend to ignore my mistakes when playing along with someone else because they are “covering” for me.
While we are playing along we can still check in on Josh’s fingering whether he is muted or not. This gives us practice watching another player and reading their fingering.
We can use Youtube’s built-in playback speed to get 50%, 75%, Normal, etc.
Like many other people I have a youtube playlist of playalongs that I use. I could add the morning routine to my playlist.
Notes about each Exercise:
Ex 1. I love this as a warm up. Not hard to learn, sounds cool. To make it even harder you could play swing eights or triplets on every note.
Ex 2. With this one - we say its about plucking, but as soon as we introduce the pinky roll it becomes much more difficult. My pinky roll with D-G string is meh, with the A-D strings it is really bad. The distance from the pad of my pinky to the joint (the least meaty part) appears to be exactly the string spacing so I always hit the second string with a very hollow joint space and get buzzing. If I really try to make it work I get the flying middle finger. So, definitely needs the Painfully Slow and Precise treatment.
Ex 2. When I don’t use the pinky roll I have a problem with muting with this one. My index finger tends to come off the strings which allows them to ring a bit.
Ex 2. Looking forward to focusing on plucking once I figure out To Pinky Roll or not to Pinky Roll.
Ex 3. Working on fretting hand muting is great. I love this one. Really need to slow it down to work on those stacatto eight notes - esp on the open strings. I think the psychological problem I need to overcome here is that moving the fretting hand toward to strings my brain associates with playing a note NOT playing a rest. So I need to overcome that association - practice is required.
I guess I managed to practice for roughly half the days but I probably did more than 10 mins, especially in the beginning so it probably balances out a bit. My feedback is pretty similar to what’s been said.
Ex 1: The hardest part for me was remembering where my fretting fingers were supposed to go next and it took me a while to memorize it, once I had though it was fine and I didn’t find the advanced version particularly more challenging than the regular one.
Ex 2: I also struggled with the pinky roll. I vacillated between that and stacked fingers and found both of them difficult in different ways. I never really mastered it so haven’t gotten to the actual plucking part of the exercise yet but it’s still definitely useful and I will keep going with it.
Ex 3: Definitely a good one for my open string mutes and I loved the tune. I can happily play this several times in a row on repeat and not get bored.
I always wonder doing these things though, has my general technique actually gotten better or have I just improved through practice on these specific exercises? Each new thing I try almost seems like starting from scratch. What would be interesting, is if there were a separate ‘test’ piece that we could guage ourselves against. So try the test piece on day 1, do the exercises for 30 days, then try the test piece again.
First of all thank you for another great challenge and practice routine.
Practicing in the morning is not new to me, since I picked up the bass about 2 years ago I always practise for 15 -35min before I go to work. Without this routine I’m sure I had lost motivation at some point and never come so far as I am now.
And now to the exercises :
exercise 1: it took me 1-2 days to memorize the pattern, it wasn’t a big challenge but I like it as finger warmup.
Exercise 2: the pinky roll D-G was ok even on day one but from A-D it was terrible. I realised I don’t really rolled the finger I just changed the angle of my hand. It’s much better now.
Exercise 3: I struggled a lot muting the open strings in the first 2 weeks and I am really surprised how good I can do it now after 4 weeks. This is my greatest achievement from this challenge.
So I probably only got to run through these exercises for the last couple of weeks of November, but here are my comments:
I only played the exercises at the basic level. I never quite felt confident enough to increase the difficulty.
Exercise 1: I really enjoyed this one - it felt more melodic than the others. I felt that my string-crossing technique got smoother over the two weeks of playing this one.
Exercise 2: Finger-rolling is my kryptonite at the moment, so I was equal parts dreading this and looking forward to the opportunity to try and improve my technique. Whilst I’m still a long way off a competent finger-roll, I definitely feel like it’s been improving since playing this exercise. It’s probably a tricky thing to show, but a video focused on the finger-roll technique could be useful?
Exercise 3: I didn’t get to spend too much time playing this one, due to focusing on the first two exercises. Interestingly I struggled to play this at a slower tempo (50bpm) compared to a higher tempo (100bpm) - it was difficult to “feel” the rhythm at a slower tempo This one definitely made me focus on actually counting out the rhythm, instead of simply playing by “feel”.
Funny, I didn’t think people remembered it anymore, so this is a funny coincidence.
