I called a band meeting and went through a list of things that required work, politely.
I explained that we are all in our 50s and time is a precious commodity.
We want to show up on time, having learned the songs before arriving, practice and go home.
No noodling. Noodling is the same as shouting in a restaurant. Nobody wants to hear it. It wastes time and is unproductive. Finish the song, quick chat about what needs work. Then repeat or move on.
Problem solved. It does help I’m ex military and don’t give a shit
Letting one note flow into the other, with no gaps between them.
One way would be to fret the note without plucking again, like a hammer-on but (depending on the song) maybe lightly; or pluck lightly after letting the first note ring right up to the time to play the second. The desired goal is for it to sound like a single flowing tone that changes pitch. For two notes that close you could also try a slide (though that usually has a different marking).
I’m currently struggling with deciding what technique to concentrate on. I’ve never learned any properly despite playing for 25 years and I feel I should get a course that might take me through what I’m supposed to be doing!
So, My slap technique isn’t great, mainly because I’ve never really needed to use it so I never learned. I’m interested in attempting some tapping although every time I do it I get a horrible clanging sound. I want to be able to play quick triplets using the third finger on my right hand and I would also like to tune up my muting and fingering and am looking for ways to do that.
I did consider it. I came here to ask about it (I have a degree in music and have played for about 28 years!) but I had some interesting conversations and ended up going to the TalkingBass site as I was specifically trying to re-learn my modes and scales and apply them to Bass, which isn’t something I’d done before!
