Your approach to breathing

[Swimming Bird]

Janek,

I just saw the breakthroughbassplay.com video of you explaining how you bring out different melodies in writing bass lines. I found it very helpful and I think it'll get me practicing in a way that should expand my knowledge of how chords sound together with certain notes over them as well as helping me directly develop new melodies for my bass lines.

One thing I noticed that was your breathing. I've never really worked on it, but I feel it gets really wonky sometimes. You appear to be taking big intakes on the 1 (particularly evident at around 6:30) -- is this a skill you cultivated on purpose? If so, why?

Thanks!

-Alex

[janekbass]

the breathing thing came fairly naturally to me in the beginning and I only started to think about it later on when I wanted to develop it further. It's just about relaxing I think, and being able to accomplish more the more relaxed you can be.

It's important for me to really make sure I'm as calm as possible when practicing at home so I can put that way of thinking into muscle memory. And when you get on the gig there are so many other factors that will get your adrenalin going and mess with your relaxation, so the more prepared for that you can be the better I think. And I think relaxing and breathing really helps with your ability to listen to what's going on around you too, which is a key element to all music.

Janek