Creating a practice session.

[bhobbit105]

Hey all. I Just found this incredibly usual forum earlier today, and decided to start posting.

I started self teaching myself the bass 2 or 3 months ago.
I use websites to teach myself but have decided to forgo them and use actual advice from people to help better myself, the same goal we all want, right?

I read music to an extent, not as well as I probably need to though.


But to the point, I've decided I need help in creating a 'practice session' routine.

I read these two topics:
Practice Practice Practice
Pacman's sure-fire scale practice method

Which were incredibly useful to the extent I knew what was being talked about.
Sadly, alot of it went over my head.

So I ask the bass forums, what can I do to educate myself on the things talked about in those specific threads.
A particular site that one of you recommends is useful =)

And also, as a few month player of the Bass, what things do I need to focus on in practice.
I hear alot about practicing scales, but I'm not entirely sure what a scale is, and the dictionary definition is not very useful, lol.
So far, my experience is playing off tablatures, my friend playing his drum set, and making basic riffs (Based solely on 'it sounds good')

Please help =)
Thank you all very much.

Also, I'm sure you've all seen a plethora of threads exactly like this one.
Hopefully you'll be merciful, haha.

[DudeistMonk]

Welcome to TB...good to see you read some stickies

Anyway...First I would (and probably 9/10 people on this forum would) recommend you get an instructor at least for a lil while. I can't tell you how much faster I learned with an instructor than without.

In lou of that read EVERYTHING here http://studybass.com

A scale is a series of intervals that people use to structure music (its actually way more complicated than that when you get into scale chord relationships and forming scales from chords ext.).

Look up Major Scale, Minor Scale, Blues Scale, Pentatonic Scale (major and minor) learn them upside down and backwards, in as many positions as you can, using open strings and frets.

Learn arpeggios (broken out chords) Major, Minor, Major7, Major6, Minor7 ext...

Get yourself a good theory book, and when you play these scales and chords play them to death, til you can do them in your sleep, just playing through them you can learn all of basic music theory in a week, but to actually be able to use it you need to play these things over and over until you no longer need to think.

[StyleOverShow]

I think the DudiestMonk is right on the money.

I would integrate music into the theory. Learn the blues first, then R&B and Rock.

Ray Charles stuff that was popular a couple of years ago is easy enough to get and they are good examples of playing simple, tight lines. The Winter Brothers are good for Rock Stuff as they play by the rules, kinda, but have their own approach (Rock and Roll Hoochie Coo has a good lick for instance). Stevie Ray Vaughn "Cold Shot" etc.


It helps to learn theory but you need to apply it so that you can recognize it with your ear when you hear it.

I would also suggest you sing. Yup, its horrible at first, but sing the lines you play. Learn to play the lines you imagine (and sing) in your head. It helps develop your ear.

[bhobbit105]

Haha wow those are amazing responses. Thank you, both of you =)

I'm going to check out that site as soon as I can, I'm a little busy at the moment.
(Sort of. at work, ha.)

So forgive me if this question is covered there but I highly prefer playing with a pick as opposed to slapping or plucking.

Any advantages or disadvantages to that?

Or do once I get used to plucking does it sound that much better? Or what.

Thank you =)

[DocBop]

Practice EVERY day even if only 5 or 10 minutes. Daily practice gets more done than a few long sessions a couple times a week.

Have a practice todo list and practice everything on your list everyday again even if only a few minutes.

Keep a practice journal and track the things you are working on like metronome settings, keys, or etc. Also if doing something that take more time than you have track where you left off, so you can start from that point the next day.

Set reasonable goals to get a feeling of accomplishment. Too many focus on the big picture, I will call it the big A. Trouble is you get to where you feel you aren't progressing because the big A is so far away. Break that big A in to smaller small A components. As you start completing the small A's your are feel a sense of accomplishment and see how they are building towards the big A.

Keep focused so practice is practice and just wailing away are separate.

Take a break every hour for ten minutes and get away from your practice area, and drink some water or eat something. There is a long psychology explanation on why that i won't go into. Main thing is when doing a long practice session if you take a every hour you will able to keep your focus and not just be noodling around. Again a short focused practice is better than a long session that was mainly noodling out of boredom.

Again the journal is important for the reason's above but also when you hit a wall and think you aren't progressing. Going back and looking at the journal you can see you have make progress.

Using a egg timer when practicing helps a lot. Not only for a reminder to take a break, but you set a time for a task working on a scale and limit it to ten minutes and force yourself to stop when the timer goes off done or not. Then the follow week shorten the time to 9 minutes, and over time more and more. You will find subconsciously you will start learning faster. You will know I only have n minutes to get sometime done. Suddenly you develop the ability learn fast because you now can block distraction out and focus. When you can focus like that its like time is slowing down and you can think about all the ways you have to do something. When you hear about great studio sight-readers that is what's going on they are focused when the count off starts and are reading bars ahead of where they are playing. It's a Zen thang.

[Rudreax]

Using a pick will not hamper your ability to play well (depending on your style, anyway), but you will get some slack from "bass purists" that feel that you should only be using your fingers. However, just ignore those guys, they don't know what they're talking about.

That shouldn't stop you from learning, though. You should try to split your practice sessions into multiple parts, using each part to work on both picking and fingerplucking. Once you get slapping down, you should also try to impliment that into your practicing. It might be a hassle to do, but you'll be happy you did when you get more opportunities to play in bands thanks to your ability to use different playing styles well.

Speaking of styles, you should try to get into as many different styles of playing as possible, starting with the kind you like the most and then branching off from there. Listening to the bass's role in different settings will help you get a batter grasp of how the bass should sound in different genres.

[Howlin' Hanson]

bhobbit105, a pick is fine. I would learn to play with fingers and with thumb as well, for a variety of sounds.

This is way over simplified, but the simplest scale is one that most people can sing: do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. The last 'do' (pronounced dough) is an octave higher than the first. When sung the way we remember, this is a 'major' scale.

Scales typically have seven notes, plus the octave at the end. But there are actually twelve evenly spaced tones between the octaves. You vary the 'spacing' to get the different types of scales, such as minor.

That's the simple basic introduction to scales. And I know I probably didn't get that totally correct, but this will soon be corrected by those here more knowledgeable than I am. NOW you need to start digging deeper. Get a book and/or lessons and hit the fretboard!