Printable Version of Topic

Posted by: Bogdan Radovic Jan 19 2015, 12:25 PM

Hey everyone!

I'll use this thread to share with you my new (old) bass lessons from back in the days which never got published before.

This is the 10th lesson in my Bass First Steps series of lessons and helps me round up the series. Although the lesson is part of beginner bass series, it touches upon some extremely important concepts which are often missed when starting to play and show up as technique problems when players get to intermediate stage. This exact same thing happened to me and I basically hit a plateau until I could address those issues to make further progress. That has inspired me to record this lesson.

Which issues I'm talking about? Playing sloppy, feeling clumsy when fingerpicking more complicated passages, having trouble stopping unwanted noises which results in boomy tone and generally what is called "bad" tone, not being able to play fast enough. Good news is that all of this is fixable with some simple "rules" you can apply. Bad news is that stuff I'll be teaching here is not often addressed by teachers and can be hard to figure out on your own.

The lesson above addresses mostly fundamentals of fingerpicking bass technique and how to position your hand in order to be able to mute successfully unwanted strings. MUTING - this is where the key lies. This helps you have a good tone on the bass. Strings vibrate even if you don't touch them when playing, due to neck and wood transferring vibrations. In turn, you not only get the note you wanted to play, but also some weird frequencies and boomy sounds from other strings. This really kills your tone and I had quite a bit of issues, especially at band rehearsals and gigs where the volume is high, to keep my bass under control.

Other essentials I'll cover are proper right hand technique (picking hand) and how to utilize economy of motion. This is a concept which might be a bit weird to adopt at first (for example thumb anchor positions and trailing), but I highly recommend it as once it becomes natural to you, you'll be able to push through your current limits and make progress. I'm also talking about basics of what I like to call alternate fingerpicking technique, something which will help you play faster. At the end of lesson you'll find me covering topics of string crossing. String crossing was something really problematic for me to play until I figured out how to do it. What happened is that I'd get tons of noise when changing strings while playing and I had no clue how to stop them until I've figured out some tricks I could utilize. Last but not least, in the very end of the lesson I'll introduce you to the concept of playing double stops. This means two notes at the same time. Something which bass players don't play that often but useful to know. Personally, I like to end songs on a double stop when playing live. You know the very last note band plays to end the song. Double stops can also be cool in funky bass lines. Listen to the song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM9uMJWtNww by RHCP.

Besides theoretical stuff and addressing concepts, you'll also find exercises in the lesson which you can practice along with the metronome. When practicing bass, I do like to replace the metronome with just a drum beat. I find this very helpful overall as playing along drums makes the exercise more realistic and at the same time I get used to "really listening" to drums and what is being played there. Another benefit of this is that you feel more comfortable playing with a live drummer as you are used to "following and playing along with the drums". One thing to be aware of : live drummers will rarely play precisely like a metronome, rather they will be all over the place. I've once read a quote in some bass magazine, quote of a famous bassist was something along the lines that drummers which have problems with tempo and timing and the most fun to play with actually and they make the music come alive + they always keep you on your toes when jamming along

I'd be interested to know if anyone has any questions about the stuff I mentioned or has experienced similar things?
Also, I'd love to hear if you have any bass related questions or topics you'd like to discuss with me?
Just shoot your post right here in the topic and we'll have a bass chat

Posted by: Bogdan Radovic Feb 6 2015, 11:31 AM

Hey everyone, my new (old) lesson is now live:

http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/ls/Time-Keeping-Workshop/

This one introduces basic beat counting and exercises which can help you start counting the beats while playing and being more aware of them. These exercises should work equally well for bass or guitar. Counting beats is one of skills that can get really useful if you are into playing rhythm guitar (or bass). This skill helps you get more comfortable feeling when playing as you'll start to hearing when each bar of the music starts, where it ends and everything in between. If you are playing alone with a singer for example, you are usually expected to keep timing and beat and it is often done by accenting some strong beats (like beat 1 in a bar of music). This helps singer feel the beat when performing live. Same thing if you are jamming with other guitarists or keyboard players (without drummer), you do need to accent certain beats in order to setup a groove and to have everyone in time as they will often be listening for clues in your playing where beat 1 is for example so that they can lock in.

I have posted more about Time Keeping subject here, please check it out if you have a chance: http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_forum/index.php?showtopic=53828