hmm, they have been good, struggling too but better than poor FedEx.
2 Likes
I agreee with @John_E don’t get wrapped up in the progress. I have seen quite a few basses ship, and couple things to note.
And this goes for either UPS or Fedex
- A box gets updated when it is scanned
- If it is sitting in a depot or in a truck headed across country, it doesn’t get scanned and it can be days before you get an update
-The online updates you see are not the complete set of updates
-There are labor shortages and a lack of people to move them in depots. I had a bass sit for 5 days in Oregon, the last depot before my local one.
-Information you see may not be accurate. I had a bass that showed it had been delivered at my local UPS station and rather than wait for the next day, I went to pick it up. It wasn’t there yet, the system wasn’t giving me the whole story
Patience is a virtue in waiting on a shipment these days. Hang in there, it’s on the way.
3 Likes
Thanks for the ideas 
I think more practice with different rhythms and genres is the key to know when and how to fill and when not to.
I perhaps phrased my question wrongly. When I’m jamming, I usually have an endgame in sight, to practice this or practice that. At the moment, “this” are fills, and “that” is finding the most tasteful bassline. In some cases, I’m putting a fill in even though I know that it doesn’t suit it. But often, I think it’s good practice to try a fill in such places to learn when NOT to play a fill. It will give e better feedback about when to fill and when not to fill.
I’m always ware that less is more and that I don’t need to fill the entire song with notes. Bass is still an accompaniment instrument rather than centre stage.
5 Likes
Ah, gotcha. I tend to overplay on fills, so I’ve been working on a more minimalist approach. Something a bit more tasteful than my usual, “let me show you everything I know in 2 bars!” tendency 
3 Likes
The Walking Bass Lines from Talking Bass might be better, assuming you are ok with chord tones (triads, 7chords, etc…) and scales.
Yes, for sure the Walking Bass Class is good for this. It is also good for construction of fills. It is a fine class and very much a practical use guide for continuing Chord Tones and Scales beyond the Essentials classes.
And I agree that for practice, you defiantly want to play more fills, especially when playing alone with drum tracks and song tracks, this way you can work them out better alone and sound better when playing with others.
But don’t also rule out practicing them with others.
Direct feedback can bee good, as long as you are prepared for criticism.
probably constructive. If you are playing with any ass hats, then maybe play less notes, and then do more trials when there are nice people in the room.
3 Likes
I think the thing I struggle with is thinking that there has to be a bass fill every 4 or 8 bars. Never play a fill unless you are hearing it in your ear/head as a musical thing.
If you hear musical cool and hip fills every 4 or 8 bars, you should still probably only play them every 16 or 32… or only before the big transition or whatever.
The more I play, the more sessions I play on, the more producers I work with - I get much bigger feedback when I play 2 fills in a 3 minute song then when I put something every 8 bars.
As far as hearing it -
A good test is: hum along with your bass line the entire time the jam is going on. Don’t play anything. If you keep humming bits that aren’t the bass groove, those might be good fills to put in. But if you don’t hum them, if you don’t think about them, if you don’t hear them, don’t play them.
And even then! Sparingly.
7 Likes
I joined an online session with Ariane Cap yesterday evening and she was echoing this sentiment. Occasional fills, with plenty of space in between to let them breathe.
She gave a practical example of occasional fills vs filling all available space. Guess which sounded better. 
5 Likes
This made me laugh. You are so so right. 
I always felt that using too many Bass fills was like competing with the lead guitar playing solos, arpeggios etc.
3 Likes
Recently, I had a conversation with my brother who plays drums. It was about playing alone and feeling this drive to fill all of the sonic space and how that doesn’t make for good songs. He recommended playing along with songs, even if you aren’t playing the a specific part but taking the time to use the song to find where you can add fills and embellishments that don’t sound out of place.
4 Likes
I wish I had footage from some of the gigs I single-handedly turned into undance-able bass-fill extravaganzas.
I was young, dumb, and full of notes!!
I couldn’t be stopped!!!
Blessedly, I was also too clueless to know what I was doing at the time, thus saving me the realization of what I was doing to the music.
Sadly, none of the other pros on the gig took me aside and slapped me in the face and told me to go learn simple basslines and stop listening to Jaco… so rather than it being a one time offense it was a good long stretch of ruining gigs… (but having the time of my life!)
I speak from deep experience.
Hear the song first, the bass line second, and then play every 4th or 5th bass fill you think would be cool.
Save the dancers, save the gig, save the music.
8 Likes
Yeh, lots of people have the look at me, look at me syndrome, but as you said, doing this on a Bass can ruin a song very quickly 
4 Likes
Hard earned wisdom.
3 Likes
Miles Davis famously said “It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.”
I think people see YouTube videos designed to grab your attention fast and feel that should get extended throughout a song.
5 Likes
Patience is a virtue when waiting on… anything is a virtue I find in short supply these days. Amazon has set the expectation that anything can be delivered in one or two days, so I blame them. 
That said, I did get an email notification that it will arrive tomorrow between 4:15 PM and 6:15 PM. A week and a half from date of purchase. So there’s that.
3 Likes
I’ve generally embraced the delays as “order it, forget it and get excited when whatever comes”….unless….
- I’ve forgotten I ordered it and ordered another (has happened)
- Things take ridiculously longer than the company says (over and over).
4 Likes
Multiple fast microshifts… would like to be able to just do 1fpf.
4 Likes
I would have been a bass player for 4 weeks instead of two at this point except the first bass I bought still registers as being at a UPS depot in Maumee Ohio. Been there since August 28. Only took a couple weeks to find a replacement because those Yammie 504’s are hard to find these days! Here’s hoping you have better luck!
4 Likes
Play full songs with your index finger only, and shift the shapes.
I did this with Hound Dog. I found that song excellent practice material.
I did that for a while, then I just started playing each bar on a different fret or with a different shape, up and down the neck.
Any good 1/8 note 12 bar blues around that same speed will do the trick.
Then really slow ones, and ad some speed later on.
But if you play hound dog, with starting on the C in position (2nd fret) and shift your index to the E on 2nd fret of D and shift it down to the G, and back up to the C, and do that thru the first 12 bars,
Then do the C on 8th fret, E on 7th of A and G on 10th, or back up to the 5th on D
Just move all over it with a single fret. Might sound stupid, but it is loads of fun.
Also, play them an Octave up to get more places to move.
I got all over the neck with it.
AND
Do the same with changing triad patterns.
4th finger shape
2nd finger shape
1st finger shape
try to not play the same shape more than one time, always changing thru the whole song.
And move all over the neck, and create you own shapes.
This won’t leave any time to add fills either (just the chromatic passing note fill built into the the song on the 8th bar I believe.), so you can practice the No Fills rule thru the whole song, just explore the neck.
Get songs in different keys and spend some time with one song, then a few days later, switch, and go thru all the keys you can find good songs for.
2 Likes
Agreed about playing less rather than more fills, EXCEPT in my jam sessions when I’m working on fills (I don’t want to only play 1 or 2 fills per song, I want to try a different fill every 4 or 8 bars see if it works).
Recently in the last few days I’ve started looking into aimlessly noodling around to find phrases.
3 Likes
Hound Dog is in fact a pretty standard 12 bar blues line. I practice it all the time, but I start on G on the E string - G G G G C C G G D C G walk down back C to G; same pattern as Hound Dog
Mina has tiny hands, I watch her to see how she does it.
2 Likes