practicing time

[just_me]

hello Janek (and anyone else who wants to give some advice on that),

so I'm just wondering, how did you/do you practice your time feel? do you have specific exercices with or without a metronome, or do you just go out and play with good drummers?
and have you practiced "grouping of notes" (like groups of 5 sixteenths notes like in jaco's solo on contiuum)?
I'm sorry if my english is not that clear, but hope it makes kinda sense....
thanks a lot for your time

yannick

[MPBASS]

Hi!!!

I think developing good time has to do with 3 things....

1)working on your inner sense of rhythm so you can groove on your own without depending on an external source regardess of it's human or electronic nature...

2)having good command of your instrument so there is no techinal difficulty that prevents you from letting go and focusing on the groove...

3)understanding what the other instruments are playing and how your bass line interacts with the other rythmic activity in the song...this means developing the skill to listen to yourself and others at the same time and of course really getting to know the musical style you are playing....

hope this helps!!!

[Andrew.Glose]

If I may contribute,

Listen. It's how a musician observes. Listen to anything and everything that appeals to you, and then some that doesn't immediately appeal to you. You'll start to notice why their time feel sounds so good. And you'll eventually internalize it, which will come through in your playing.

Playing with a solid drummer helps tremendously, as well.

A

[janekbass]

for me time comes the most through transcription. Varied styles of transcription always help the most as you can analyze different players takes on time feel.

Learning a bass line or a solo and jamming it along with the recording is great as it puts you inside the persons head to give you a better idea of what they were feeling when they played it.

Imitating other people has it's limitations of course as you'll only end up sounding like other people if you exclusively do that. Learning from from recordings is what gives you a starting point to move forward and create your own sound and time feel.

I've also always tried to surround myself with players that are far better than me, and that has helped inspire me to be better, and to learn on the fly as I play with them in a big way.

Easy,

Janek