I’m in module 11 and while most of my bass playing is focused on the lessons, I take time between lessons to work on some songs. At the danger of outing myself as basic and at the risk of garnering some eye rolls, I want to play some Primus.
I try not to get ahead of the lessons so I’ve eliminated anything with slap for now as that isn’t covered until later, but looking through the lessons and it doesn’t look like strumming is covered at all in B2B. Am I overlooking it? Does Josh cover strumming in B2B? If not, can you recommend another resource to learn how to strum on the bass? I’m mostly having trouble with what I guess would be called the upstroke, but even down stroke sounds bad. I’m not sure which finger or fingers should strike the string and which part of the finger or fingers.
I would consider Les Claypool as being almost as far from basic as you can get. I’ve seen videos where he talks about his strumming techniques, he’s said he strums down with his middle fingernail (or any other nails, depending on which ones are broken), but I’m not sure how he strums up. But you can see it when he plays, he strums both up and down with his fingers.
I’d recommend “Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweakers” as a good Primus song to start on, it has a lot of strumming and a fairly basic (LOL) slapping pattern. That’s the one I muck around with when I’m feeling like taking on some Primus.
I don’t want to be discouraging but I’ve been playing for ~4 years and I haven’t even considered attempting anything by Primus. If I can ever nail any Primus track I will consider it a major milestone.
I’ve seen a handful of different strumming techniques across various covers and watching live performance and for me I seem to have some success using my index and middle fingers as the primary strummers. Essentially I make a loose fist then just throw my fingers straight down and flip them right back to my palm on the way up.
Don’t get ahead of yourself - develop rock solid technique before attempting anything super technical (as all Primus tends to be).
For maximum clarity back of the nail index or middle finger and on the way up your thumb. Love Claypool, though I have not touch his stuffs yet either.
I totally get that and recognize that 99% of Primus is just outside my ability at this point. I started messing around with Southbound Pachyderm and quickly said “nope, I’ll revisit this in a year or two”. I’m looking at Too Many Puppies, which seems like it should be doable for someone of my level if you can strum.
Almost all of my practice is focused on B2B lessons, but then after my daily lessons I’ll spend 20-30 minutes trying to play songs.
I appreciate all the advice given and I found a talking bass lesson on youtube about strumming. The idea seems simple enough, but when I do it I don’t get the right pressure or don’t hit all the strings. It sounds muted or otherwise like crap. I’ll move on to an even more basic song for now and just add 5-10 minutes of strumming practice to my daily routine to see if I can eventually get it sounding ok.
I tried that song for a while. I could play the different parts… like the kinda chugging line, and then the melodic line… separately, but trying to integrate it, keeping that chugging part going along with the melodic part, that was too much.
Here’s the gif I made for some nice Claypool-esque strumming.
It’s down with the whole hand - mostly index and middle, but you do what’s comfortable.
On the way back, you’re brushing over things with your index.
Which finger doesn’t matter as much as the touch (not too hard, or your fingers get stuck and don’t strum across).
Hell yeah.
I’ll always be the champion for jumping into completely impractical techniques because you think they sound cool.
Always follow what sounds cool to you!
Is this where I ask about shell voicings and dropping fifths to include thirds and communicate major/minor? In the chord you posted I guess the major 7th tells you what chord it is?
I’m at least trying to plant the seed of an idea for a new article. Chord structure when it’s not on a piano with all of the tones in the same octave available fascinates me!
