Playing without looking

I’m no pro, but welcome to the club. Short answer? Get it in your hands for awhile and focus on fundamentals. It’ll come to you.

I’ll give you one. It’s not bass related though.

When you’re sent to a new job site to demolish an old existing garage ready to build a new one. Ensure that not only have you confirmed the street number is correct but that you’re also on the right street. Oh how we laughed. Apart from the owner (of the perfectly functional garage we trashed) when he got home. He didn’t see the funny side of it.

As previously mentioned by many; practice, practice, practice and just have fun.

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If Boh can spend all his time staring at his fretboard, I won’t feel bad about it.

I was thinking about this the other day, and I watch my fretboard visualizing where my fingers need to go next as I play. I don’t know why, but it works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ufy1fbUECM

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Well, agreeing that it’s practice, but one thing that helped me was just trying it. Sounds silly, but after a while, when it didn’t come to me naturally, I just was told to play a song I felt good with, while not looking at the fretboard. Dark room. Closed eyes. Just try it. And then notice it’s not as bad as you might hav expected. Not perfect, but you start to figure out how to fix it…and you might find you’re better at it than you thought.

I find that not having to look at my hand helps when reading new songs. So I don’t have to keep bouncing back and forth between the music and the fretboard. I mean, I am still making a bunch of mistakes, but it’s getting better. So practicing not looking is good. I had thought it was “practice enough and then you won’t have to look” and it wasn’t that way for me.

Your friendly neighborhood beginner bassist electrician loves this! Being a construction worker ain’t so bad. unless you cut the wrong pipe, or shut off the wrong switch, that is…funny story, the client never has a sense of humor about this.

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@derek_m_robinson check out this thread as well:

That bass solo at the end is nuts. Looks like a 6 string bass is the lead instrument of choice :slight_smile:

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Boh’s amazing. Every musician that has been in that band is world class.

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Then how will i read the music i’m playing? :slight_smile:

I also had the same questions when I first started 8 months ago. How to play fast, how to play without looking at the fretboard etc etc. So, I’ll fill you in on the secret on how to play without looking. Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but the only way is to practise mate. Plain and simple. It all comes with time. After 8 months, I can do it maybe do it 20% of the time on songs I know very well. New songs take much longer.

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The same way I have always read music - glancing at it occasionally as bookmarks for a song you already know :slight_smile:

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I rarely play a song long enough to learn it and also I’m lazy :joy:

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You should really check where Ohmura’s playing next December 26. Every year on his birthday the Kamis and Gacha Spin jam together to celebrate. Ohmura went to school with one of the Gacha Spin members, can’t recall which.

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I love it when Gacharic Spin does metal. Metallic Spin is hilarious.

Love F-Chopper’s rainbow-fretboard extreme ESP there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBWkWeknJco

those wigs rofl

I think the only reason this was released is this was Mikio’s final performance before his fatal accident a few days after. This would have been fun to be at.

That’s totally awesome. And the best pair of Priest songs. Tomo-zo rocking out, Hana singing Halford like a pro :slight_smile:

F-Chopper and Boh just kind of bopping in the background for most of it.

That’s some serious chops on stage there.

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Here’s the behind the scenes for 2020’s, starts with F-Chopper handing over the cake, then lots of charming stuff with the bands and kids.

When Ohmura is talking with the kid with the hearts guitar (which puts me in mind of a Hide guitar), he is holding the guitar Mikio’s wife gave him, and which he plays in his senseis memory; Mikio was one of Ohmura’s first teachers. He’s actually playing Mikio’s guitar throughout.
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What I did was practice in front of a mirror and look at the fretting hand through the mirror. This forces you to look forward, then eventually once muscle memory develops and you learn to feel for frets you’ll stop looking.

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When I bought my first fretless, the salesman (who was an excellent bassist) told me to play in the dark. Doing this, he said, would link my ear to my muscle memory without having to look at the fretboard. I was already proficient on fretted bass, but did have the bad habit of looking at the fretboard. The skills I learned by playing fretless in the dark transferred to my fretted playing to the point that I rarely needed to look at the fretboard on either. Also, learning to play in the dark helped when I have had to play gigs on low light stages.

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