Daily Essential Technique Exercises?

jamiefoxer · #1 09-06-2007, 06:03 AM

I'm a music teacher and I'm also a very busy performing artist. In between my work duties, life duties, and performing duties, I have little time to sit down and just work on exercises that will improve my speed, familiarity and "muscle-memory" knowledge of the fretboard.

However, as part of my teaching duties, I have to do Hall Duty and I'm allowed the ability to take my electric bass with me in the hall and spend 1 hour a day watching the Hallway. I'd like to use that time productively by getting out all of my daily technique exercises out of the way at that time.

So far, I just do repetition of major/minor scales all the way up and down the fretboard, practice basic slap technique, and do major scales going up and down by thirds.

What else can I be doing during this time to maximise this 1 hour a day for just technique work? I figure that if I hit these exercises everyday during this hour, I should improve heavily in a year's span

Deacon_Blues · #2 09-06-2007, 07:04 AM

Check out the exercise sticky.

I'd also like to encourage everyone here to post more exercises there for it to really become a valuable source for everyone, whether it is like the ones I posted or just links to youtube videos or similar.

BassChuck · #3 09-06-2007, 08:50 AM

I too am a music teacher performing with 2 groups. I can't bring my bass to school for anything productive like an hour practice.

Two skills that I found that have helped me is to play all the modes in all the keys. I do G major, A dorian, B phrygian, C lydian .... etc then start with Ab major, Bb dorian... you get the picture.

The other is one I learned from a jazz trumpet player. He used to open his fake books to ONLY the table of contents and play the tunes by ear. So I've done that, made a list of songs and play the melodies... not from notation or tab, just from ear and memory. This really helps know the fretboard and develp an ear to hand co-ordination.

One of the problems with practicing at school, and I have tried that over the years, is that few non-musicans know how to respect a practicing musician's time.

A related note, if you are familar with band music you probably have heard of Jim Swearingen the composer. When he taught at Grove City HS in Ohio, he used to take a piano in the hall for his hall duty time and compose there.

stedtale · #4 09-06-2007, 08:56 AM

My main warm-up stuff:

Scales/modes/arpegios.

-Major/minor/7th/dorian/lydian/etc

-one octave

-two octaves

-three octaves

-straight (12345678-87654321)

-in thirds (13243546576878-867564534231271)

-in fourths (1425364758-8574635241)

-in fifths...sixths...ect

-in the box technique (described very well by pacman in a sticky).

jamiefoxer · #5 09-06-2007, 02:22 PM

thank you Steddale...I've been doing SOME of that, but yours is much more complex. To be honest, I'm not very good in remembering what "mode" is which. There's much material there for me to really hit.

I noticed that people kept talking about a technique called "The Spider" in the sticky...

I looked at the notation on the page, but it confused me. Can someone explain in more detail how to perform the spider? Also, is there a video link to a YouTube demonstration of it? Sounds like an exercise that would help too.

Thanks!

mambo4 · #6 09-06-2007, 02:43 PM

I once saw a podcast video clip of a famous bassist I can't remember (Dave Larue?) practicing a warm up he called "the spider"

essentially it was a non- musical finger strength exercise

starting on F on the e string, he play chromatically (1 finger per fret) :F Gb G Ab
Then he'd jump up a string and up one half step : Bb B C Db
Then he'd jump up a string and up one half step : E F Gb G
Then he'd jump up a string and up one half step : Bb B C Db

Then he'd jump DOWN a string and up one half step : Gb G Ab A

etc...continuing up the neck, four chormatic notes/ four fngers , then up a fret and up a string -reversing the process back down.

Dave (?) said it was a justa good warm up for the left hand; light on concentration, he could carry on conversations ect while doing it.

Deacon_Blues · #7 09-06-2007, 03:26 PM

I thought the tabs I put in the the sticky for the spider were clear enough, but I edited the post so it would be clearer. The spider is basically a finger coordination/stretching/string skipping exercise and should be played strictly with the one finger per fret (OFPF) technique. You can alter it in many different ways, like play every note two times before moving on, play it with a triplet feel etc etc etc...You can also use it for practicing SA if you double, triple or quadruple the notes.

jamiefoxer · #8 09-06-2007, 09:04 PM

deacon,

You probably were very explanatory in your original post. It's just sometimes a little hard for me to understand written stuff. THanks for trying to clarify it. I'll take a look at it tomorrow.

Thanks to the other posters!

JimmyM · #9 09-06-2007, 10:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mambo4

I once saw a podcast video clip of a famous bassist I can't remember (Dave Larue?) practicing a warm up he called "the spider"

essentially it was a non- musical finger strength exercise

starting on F on the e string, he play chromatically (1 finger per fret) :F Gb G Ab
Then he'd jump up a string and up one half step : Bb B C Db
Then he'd jump up a string and up one half step : E F Gb G
Then he'd jump up a string and up one half step : Bb B C Db

Then he'd jump DOWN a string and up one half step : Gb G Ab A

etc...continuing up the neck, four chormatic notes/ four fngers , then up a fret and up a string -reversing the process back down.

Dave (?) said it was a justa good warm up for the left hand; light on concentration, he could carry on conversations ect while doing it.

It was Dave. I used to take lessons from him, and that was the very first exercise he showed me.

andymacuk · #10 09-13-2007, 03:35 AM

Hi All, I've just joined the forum - great stuff.

Just to add my 'two penneth' worth on good excercises.

I'm slowly working my way through a book I recently bought on Amazon called JS Bach for Electric Bass. It's classical stuff (includes tab) arranged for the bass and is great fun, especially for a newbie like me who has just returned to playing after a break of about 20 years

cheers

Andymacuk.

lomo · #11 09-13-2007, 07:13 AM

I like to run the modes in different fingerings.....for eg:
Ionian beginning with index, middle and pinky (the 3 "main" fingerings), and then diagaonally across the fretboard. I'll pick one of these and do it in 3rds or some variation, then move up a step and do the same with Dorian. I also do this with the pentatonics. I'm always interested in how my noodling with a particular scale sounds rythmically and melodically different when I change fingerings.