I still constantly look at my fretboard. It’s cool though because my styles trend shoegaze and I have to look somewhere 
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that’s vital for me too ! I always note my ideas on the fly (but often I forget to read them later 
)
covers are great for this : as you work on one song, it turns all the time in your head and you need to play it from time to time. at the end of the day you played it 10 or 15 times and it’s finally way more than 5 minutes of practice 
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Red Clay
Red Claw more like!
I feel like I shouldn’t need to play that song with a vice grip but maybe it is a little bit of a finger strength exercise?
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I love hearing people play bass like this… so enchanting and beautiful. Hence my discovering I really like Jazz bass!
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My struggle is practice in general. When I’m home from school I gotta do groceries, go to work, make dinner, go to the gym, sports, etc. Then I just wanna hang out with friends. So in my spare time I’d rather just play my acoustic guitar or whatever, anything but actually sit down and practice plucking. So my bass ‘practice’ is just rehearsals with my band where I use the pick for convenience as always before, as I can’t mess around with plucking with them in the 3-6 hrs we rent the practice space for. And free time will only disappear more in the future. D;
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My tip is routine. Have a set time of day which is ‘bass time’. Even if it’s just 15 or even 5 mins.
This is something I find easy to say and really hard to do but I’ve had a lot less spare time in the last year and doing this kept me moving forward.
When some life stuff changed and I had more free time I actually ended up playing bass less because my routine had gone to hell!
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i’m sure i’m not the only one but I don’t see it mentioned much. my problem is keeping my L thumb pressure down to a reasonable level. meaning i’m crushing the back of the neck with my thumb. which causes it to 1. slide up from the center of the neck towards the top and 2. get really fricking tired causing my palm to collapse up against the back of the neck. I don’t know what it is, no matter how much I concentrate on not doing it I do it. muscle memory that needs to be taught I guess.
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You could, for the purpose of exercising this, imagine you had NO thumb on your fretting hand… what would you do if you wanted to play bass anyway??
You’ll find that you can apply a little bit of pressure with your lower arm (of the plucking side) on the body of the bass, thus counteracting the force of your fretting fingers on the fretboard (you could imagine a point around the upper horn of a typcially shaped bass touching your chest - this would be pivoting point (fulcrum)).
Try it for a bit… slow, deliberate fretting and NO thumb at all! If you do that regularly, I would guess, the pressure of your thumb will lighten when you (eventually) put it back onto the neck.
Don’t expect to play “fancy” or fast lines… use it for very deliberate fretting… and see how it goes before increasing speed.
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That’s a good idea. I tried playing with no thumb on the neck which didn’t work cuz I was just pushing the neck back away from my fingers.
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Yes, you need some counter-action… but, really, very little is required!
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That’s not a big deal! Totally normal to have trouble finding the spots to fret without looking, early on. And even later on, sometimes! Memorizing the riff is a good solution!
Lots of pinky barring without a break, it makes sense you’d get tired! It’ll get easier. 
Try reversing the pressure with your plucking arm, either the arm resting on the bass, or with your thumb anchor.
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I’m struggling with a weak and misshapen pinky finger on my fretting hand. (Broken in an accident years ago.) Dollar for scale. The bass will be some new kind of therapy for me. Module 1 lesson 4 was a challenge for me, but I was able to get pretty close to the end of the fret with a lot of careful effort. I plan to revisit this lesson periodically or as a warm up before I start each session
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Meh. You got this.
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I knew Django’s story, the others I didn’t know.
I figured people out there with smaller hands than mine can play bass, so one effectively shortened digit shouldn’t hold me back too much. My finger has three screws in it. After I broke it, the surgeon told me if they didn’t go in it would be deformed and would not have full range of motion. I got the surgery and you can see the results.
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True, but, unfortunately for us, the pinky is way more busy (for many shapes and boxes on the fretboard) than the ring or the middle finger… so, this makes it a tougher challenge for us!
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I’m sure you’ve got this either way but you could consider trying short-scale maybe? It’s fun and was good enough for Paul McCartney etc.
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If the pinky is a major blocker physically then you could just not use it or may even switch hands. Those might not be practical or ideal though. Just throwing stuff out there.
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I’m sure they will be fine with a full scale. This little hombre is doing fine on this 34" double-buck:
Lots of bass players don’t use their pinkies much anyway
That however is an excellent reason to try a shortie.
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