My “biggest” struggle at the moment is connecting with the rhythm of the drums. Meaning; when I pull up a backing track on YT, sometimes I am on, other times, not soooo much.
If anyone would like to offer a link to an elementary kick, snare, and high hat backing track, I would be stoked.
This all steams from my counting exercises and working to keep a tempo with others.
Thanx For Checking In,
Cheers
Josh has a workout for this, I THINK it’s called the Ultimate Groove Workout, where you he takes away a beat or two etc and you try to get on the upcoming beat after the silence. This is a good way to work on this, you can do it with many metronome apps too.
I use an app called drum genius but there are several as well, many free, if you want to go that route.
Check out grooveful.io and make your own 
Then send @gcancella a coffee!
@howard , after clicking, its a tiny metronome with no sound. Is this what you meant to post??
Cheers
Yep, that is its loading screen. You should eventually see something like this:
(except without the kick/snare/cymbals already entered 
)
that’s the loading screen. it should load and display after a few secs. what browser are you using?
So I don’t know if this is common or not.
I’m finally trying to learn some slap technique. What I’ve found though is that my fingertips hit the pick guard when I’m trying to pop the G string. So if I have my amp off it becomes very apparent and annoying.
Is that common and if not, how do I prevent that?
Thanks in advance for the advice everyone!
My newfound struggle is with songs with basslines that follow the melody and change key/over different chords in the same song.
This really confuses my brain.
I actually picked my next cover because I know this is an issue and when I saw it did this I thought “this will help sort it”.
The bass line in the song plays along with the melody in G, then G#, then briefly something else that I haven’t quite figured out what yet, then back to G#.
Learning different melodies - good.
Learning the same melody a half step apart - yikes. Mix in open strings - even yikesier.
Confuses my brain.
I am learning it in chunks and putting them together but find myself lost in between the keys at times.
Any tips or tricks for this?
Key changes mess with me too, especially when charting the song out or transcribing.
I have a similar challenge right now with a classic jazz standard, Miles’ “So What” - goes from D minor to Eb minor and back to D minor…
Is the challenge coming because you use the dot markers as guiding posts when playing the melody, which then get “shifted to the left” when going to G#? That was the hard part for me and I needed to “look past” those markers and rather focus on the shapes themselves. That works for the melody/bass line, but is still challenging for the walking bass line part.
Maybe these half tone shifts are actually way trickier than larger shifts!?
And, yes, maybe try fingerings where you can avoid open strings - I bet these are big stumbling blocks indeed!
I see patterns Vs dots.
My brain just is jumbling up the patterns because they are so darn close!
I’ll try to see what avoiding the open strings does, but that might throw me off even more at this point. Hahaha.
Billie Jean was tricky and frustrating the first time through the course. It took me a couple of days to nail down. I’m going through a 2nd time and it’s like “pshht, this is a warmup exercise” 
and I’m concentrating on the accenting.
The song that’s kicking my butt at the moment is Madness — Our House.
Dang.
The bass plays on 1, the & of 1, the “e” of 2, beat 3, the “uh” of 3, and the & of 4, counted in 16th notes at 120bpm. I can wing it/feel it and get pretty close, but I really want to develop the ability to play or accent notes with that level of control and precision. It’s a work in progress 
BTW, a big shoutout to Grooveful.io. This has been a godsend for learning tricky bits.
And for those benighted souls who don’t know the song
https://youtu.be/oXA6CLTDekw
I got the book “Building Walking Bass Lines” by Ed Friedland and it was great for learning that. SBL also has a good course on that too.
It’s a great way to learn the notes on the fret board and the walking baselines book is only in standard notation so it’s great for learning to read music.
I started with a bass teacher last week and all the materials he sent were in notation onlly, which makes sense but still surprised me. Luckily I started the talkingbass sight reading course already so no issues so far. It does help that I can already read music on the treble clef, but the talking bass course is burning the fretboard in my mind, and helping with the not looking at it part too.
My biggest challenge is using my pinky and ring finger. The latter not so much, the former much more. I have trouble getting them right behind the fret; they’re either too far behind it so the note sounds all buzzy and horrible, or they’re over it so the note is off key and buzzy and horrible.
If you are playing one finger per fret, that takes time and practice to build up the right muscles in your hands you dont usually use when not playing bass.
But, if you are playing thru a riff, you can double up your fingers. So fret with both the pinky and ring finger. The ring finger is extra support, helps push the pinky up to the fret, AND is really good for string bends.
You can do this with your middle finger behind your ring finger for support on the ring finger, same benefits, and great for bends.
Also, by activating your ring finger with your pinky, you are going to gain strength in both fingers instead of just one.
Watch a lot of bass players play, and you will see that many, if not most or even all of them do it at times.
Guitar players do it as well.
I try to go one finger per fret, because that helps me to map out the fretboard in my head and get my hand moving to the right place when I’m playing. Here’s a perfect example of what I was talking about, taken from RUSH’s Tom Sawyer:
G |—————————————————————————————|
D |—7—4—6—————————7———4—6———————|
A |———————7—5—————————————7—5———|
E |———————————7———————————————7—|
I start this measure with my pinky on the D string 7th fret, then jump to index finger on the D/4th, then ring finger on D/6th. Going up to the A/7th, it’s back to the pinky again, and that jump from ring finder on D to pinky on A is awkward and weak. The A to E string jump isn’t so bad because I’m not using my ring finger; it’s pinky/middle/pinky.
The weak part will work itself out with exercise and training, but am I fingering that part right? Or is there a better way to finger that measure?
Thanks!