It’s pretty maddening to just keep trying this 1000 times even with a great video and my fingers just do not do what I want. Fundamentally I am doing something wrong with too much pressure with the fingers that are not playing the note or something. His hands just float above the strings but yet don’t mute the wrong string and can play the right note. I know it takes practice but even at one note at a time I can’t seem to do it just once.
I feel like I have to unlearn 8 months of lessons in order to do this right as I might have used bad habits to play 4 fingers.
I get it!
I would take a break from this and start playing country songs and bluegrass songs.
The bass lines are always root and fifth… the same fingering and pattern as the first 2 notes in Billy Jean. If you can find other musical ways to work on that pattern and technique without it always relating to this Cruel Mistress (thanks for that @eric.kiser) it will be way more fun to work on the technique, you’ll have more width and breadth to practice it, and you will get to have success along the way instead of staring down the twin barrels (Billy & Jean) of doom.
16th note feel is messing with my head… Like physically.
I’m so used to bobbing my head to the quarter notes, and plucking in synch with my head (when it’s either up or down), that these displaced 16th notes completely throw me off. I have to pluck when my head is halfway between up and down, and I just can’t.
I edited the original post here… Billie Jean is a Wicked Mistress
To include a link to @Gio’s advice and video in this thread for any other new folks that need it.
I’d say that as I’m just starting out, I’m having trouble w consistency of my plucking and muting. I am trying my best to pluck across the string like Josh says, but I still notice a slightly different sound off of my index finger vs. my middle. Getting a smooth clean sound everytime is pretty difficult. Any practice tips?
Keep going - index/middle/index/middle/index/middle… (maybe don’t even fret a note; just mute the string and get a feel for the two fingers plucking. And don’t practice it on the E string, but rather on the A or D string and let your fingers “fall” onto the next string as you pluck - it is good to get that feedback and you won’t get that on the E string…
Then, after a couple of hours of this, start working in some accents
Seriously, though, just keep at it… slow and steady!
I’m coming back to bass after missing a few months due to starting back at school. Needless to say, I’m struggling with pretty much everything.
I’m thinking of trying to do a module a day until I catch back up to the song that won’t be named, and then doing things at a more reasonable pace. Does that seem a bit ambitious?
yeah, I guess I have to wait … I’m not in a hurry at all anyway, I’m considering this pickup for my Ibanez Jet King when I’ll put this thing into the “project bass” category probably more a 2022 than a 2021 project !
The scales being discussed here are diatonic. There are other scales like the blues scale, Gypsy scale etc…and even more interesting is the chromatic scale. (Play every note in order until You get to root more again, including #/b).
If you play a “wrong” note in a diatonic scale, say C Major, that note is likely a chromatic one (not in the scale). This then gets into resonance and dissonance. 3rds and 5ths tend to be the most resonant notes, the rest in the scale are varying levels of dissonant, and then the chromatic notes are the most dissonant (can create tension or sound “sour” depending on use). It’s all crazy stuff. Theory is a deep rabbit-hole for sure.
Not sure this belongs here because it’s not so much any one technique that I am struggling with. This is just an overall horrible few weeks in general and I need to vent. I am just in a funk, nothing sounds good in my playing or techniques. I’ve gone back to just some basics and even that sounds horrible. I am in this place where I am searching, that place where by now with my private lessons and B2B I feel like I should be not struggling with a few of these basic things. Nothing is happening naturally and everything is a struggle and in my tone and playing it’s audible. I tried putting it down and now powering through but it’s kind of like everything has left me temporarily. My hands just don’t do what I want and it doesn’t seem to be improving. I just make the same mistakes over and over. I see some hints of actually hitting a groove for a second where it actually sounds like I actually play a bass, but then it’s gone.
I am sure everyone hits this and it’s not going to stop me, just bummed a bit. Now I’ve been just messing with gear on the hunt to just find something that sounds good. So much noise and non-smoothness to my flow, everything I listen back to is just kind of robotic. Anyway posting it out there so someday I can look back at this and see it was nothing to worry about.
I think there are two kinds of people: those who have already experienced this, and those who will. I second what @Jazzbass19 said - take a break for a day or two, and then go back to playing. You can also use this break to do some ear training, music theory, transcribe songs, look at pictures in the bass porn thread, etc…
♂
probably more a 2022 than a 2021 project !
