Help me set up a practice routine!In a slump

[The1bassist06]

I need help setting up a practice routine. I find myself trying to learn something and I end up fiddling around with something and then I end up just putting up the bass on the wall.

I dont like admitting it but this is what I have been doing for the past 2 years(have played for 5 years). To tell you the truth I cant really tell you one thing that I have learned in the past 2 years besides maybe a couple of songs I fiddled around with.

I dont really know theory. I really wanna learn theory and be a better bass player but that is easier said then done. I really wanna learn jazz but I have no idea how to approach it.

HELP ME OUT HERE!

[Remguy]

Try to learn a small something new, i.e. a riff or pattern, part of a song, etc., every time you sit down with the bass. For theory, read the Idiot's Guide to Music Theory by Michael Miller (his guide to Playing Drums is also a great read for a bassist). If jazz is your goal, start by studying the blues and chord tones/arpeggios (studybass.com) and then, only after you've spent a couple of months on the previous two things, move on to walking bass lines and jazz standards (classic jazz songs everyone knows). Don't try and learn everything at once and try to approach things systematically, start using a practice log.

[J-B'ass]

Here's a few things I've found helpful for me:

Buy The Jazz Theory Book my Mark Levine. It goes through all the basic jazz theory, beginning at simple intervals, and has a bunch of examples for each point it makes.
There is also a ton of recommended listening.

Read slowly through this book, when you come across a new concept, cement it in your mind by using it in a song (even if you just write a 4 bar song to test a new chord substitution).
Get some jazz records, like Kind Of Blue, and transcribe the basslines so you can see how the bass player approaches the song. Transcribing solos is the best way to get better at soloing, if that's what you want to do. I'd recommend Chet Baker to start off with for that.

If you want something less "academic" for when your brain hurts, learn a James Brown groove and play it with a metronome, but make the metronome contradict the beat, ie have it click once every bar on an upbeat. Move it round so you get to play with the click on each beat and upbeat, keep pushing the metronome slower so you have to rely on your own timing. Then play along with the track and see if your groove can match theirs.


And like Remguy said, don't take on too much at once, cause it's easy to overwhelm yourself with all the study material available in the world and on the internet. Just go one step at a time


Hope this gives you some ideas

[BassChuck]

Originally Posted by Remguy

Try to learn a small something new, i.e. a riff or pattern, part of a song, etc., every time you sit down with the bass. For theory, read the Idiot's Guide to Music Theory by Michael Miller (his guide to Playing Drums is also a great read for a bassist). If jazz is your goal, start by studying the blues and chord tones/arpeggios (studybass.com) and then, only after you've spent a couple of months on the previous two things, move on to walking bass lines and jazz standards (classic jazz songs everyone knows). Don't try and learn everything at once and try to approach things systematically, start using a practice log.

yea,,,,+1

Always have a goal. Always. Everytime you pick up the bass, have a goal. And understand that one great human tendancy is to make the goal so big that you can't reach it, and so then are forced to excuse yourself. Baby steps work best all the time. Such as doing all your scale at 127 bpm today 132bpm tomorrow. Learn the bridge of a new song.

[dalconthenovice]

i recommend mark levine's jazz theory book regardless of whatever genre you prefer to play
its on my opinion the best book in understand theory period, just remember the rules are ment to be learned, then forgotten, i forget who said it, but it was a famous jazz musician, its mentioned in the book too

[J-B'ass]

Originally Posted by dalconthenovice

i recommend mark levine's jazz theory book regardless of whatever genre you prefer to play
its on my opinion the best book in understand theory period, just remember the rules are ment to be learned, then forgotten, i forget who said it, but it was a famous jazz musician, its mentioned in the book too

I think it was Charlie Parker, among others.

[devine]

Someone just emailed me about this kind of thing a few days ago. Here's what i replied...

"Anyway... advice...
Ok, Yeah get a practice routine together and really try to stick to as this is going to be the key to your progress. As you can guess, the harder you practice the faster it all starts coming together. I always aimed for at least 3 hours per day 5 days a week, which at times was a struggle but i was absolutely uncompromising about it so i just made it happen. Some days i'd get up super early just to get a couple of hours in then do another hour later in the day. By practicing like this you begin to rack up an amazing amount of practice hours... 3 hours a day (5 days a week) is 15 hours per week, so thats around 60 hours a month... thats around 720 hours a year! Now you can only start to imagine what will start to happen if you practice 720 hours!!!

The next thing is what to practice as if your doing 3 hours a day you don't want to be just noodling. I used to split up my routine to focus on separate things. I used to do around an hour on continuous arpeggio exercises and scales, half an hour on technique exercises and then an hour and a half on playing over standards and transcribing what other guys were playing on the same material. When i say transcribing i don't literally mean writing out, i just mean learning their solo or parts of their solo on my instrument. Many times i'd get carried away and spend all day transcribing, soloing over tunes etc but i always made sure i did the strict 3 hours.

What i also found is that when i'd been doing it for a few weeks it started to become natural and i stopped thinking about it. What you'll probably find is that when you start to do this kind of intense practice it's quite hard to get into it to start with as to keep your concentration levels up is sometimes tough. Also, some of the material your practicing can sometimes be a little boring. Don't worry though, do it for a few weeks and it'll just become part of your everyday routine. I should add... don't feel like you have to do it all at once, you could split it up into 3 one hour sessions if that'd be better for you.

So to become a good musician... get in the shed! "

Hope that helps.

Scott.

http://www.scottsbasslessons.com

http://www.scottdevinemusic.com

[dalconthenovice]

devine: wonderful advice

my favorite practice routine involves getting OUT of the shed! i have a group of friends (we aren't a band) but once a week just go the studio and just jam out for a good solid few hours, i honestly don't think there is anything better than just being able to play with other musician and trusting your ear and each others ear

[bassinplace]

Study from books. They're good because they give you a framework to study from. View each book as a project to be completed from start to finish. Study all of the pages in order and don't move past a page until you've got it totally nailed down. It's a good way to apply discipline and deliberation to your practice and makes it much more productive.

[monroe55]

Originally Posted by devine

Someone just emailed me about this kind of thing a few days ago. Here's what i replied...

"Anyway... advice...
Ok, Yeah get a practice routine together and really try to stick to as this is going to be the key to your progress. As you can guess, the harder you practice the faster it all starts coming together. I always aimed for at least 3 hours per day 5 days a week, which at times was a struggle but i was absolutely uncompromising about it so i just made it happen. Some days i'd get up super early just to get a couple of hours in then do another hour later in the day. By practicing like this you begin to rack up an amazing amount of practice hours... 3 hours a day (5 days a week) is 15 hours per week, so thats around 60 hours a month... thats around 720 hours a year! Now you can only start to imagine what will start to happen if you practice 720 hours!!!

The next thing is what to practice as if your doing 3 hours a day you don't want to be just noodling. I used to split up my routine to focus on separate things. I used to do around an hour on continuous arpeggio exercises and scales, half an hour on technique exercises and then an hour and a half on playing over standards and transcribing what other guys were playing on the same material. When i say transcribing i don't literally mean writing out, i just mean learning their solo or parts of their solo on my instrument. Many times i'd get carried away and spend all day transcribing, soloing over tunes etc but i always made sure i did the strict 3 hours.

What i also found is that when i'd been doing it for a few weeks it started to become natural and i stopped thinking about it. What you'll probably find is that when you start to do this kind of intense practice it's quite hard to get into it to start with as to keep your concentration levels up is sometimes tough. Also, some of the material your practicing can sometimes be a little boring. Don't worry though, do it for a few weeks and it'll just become part of your everyday routine. I should add... don't feel like you have to do it all at once, you could split it up into 3 one hour sessions if that'd be better for you.

So to become a good musician... get in the shed! "

Hope that helps.

Scott.

http://www.scottsbasslessons.com

http://www.scottdevinemusic.com

Pay attention OP. This guy is the Man!
Just go to his website and get some info from Devine Scott. I've gotten enough info there to last months and it was all explained really well.....just be wary of that confounded 5 string

[Rick Robins]

Learn music.
Find a good local music teacher. A good teacher should teach you along the lines of what follows below.

I know the next link is for piano but ..it's all the same.
http://www.free-online-piano-lessons.com/index.html

The following is all directly from Jeff Berlin.
"Cmaj7, Cmin7, C7, Cmin7(b5), Cdim7, CaugMaj7,Caug7 Clyd7, C7sus4, and CminMaj7 represent pretty much most of the usable chord tones in music. Go up and down the neck playing only chord tones in, say Cmaj7. Once you are comfortable with this, if you are skilled enough to play the same ma7 in all 12 keys then do so. Then go to the Cmin7 and do the same process. If you do some math and notice that there are 10 chords above, and multiply these 10 chords by 12 keys, then you will see that I have just given you 120 new exercises."

Try not to use the tab @ this link!
http://www.scribd.com/doc/387695/Jef...-the-Bass-1987

Not from Berlin
Here are a ton of chord progressions to play around with
http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/moneychords/lesson.html

Hope this helps & good luck! Find a teacher.

[lenosgood]

Originally Posted by devine

I used to do around an hour on continuous arpeggio exercises and scales, half an hour on technique exercises and then an hour and a half on playing over standards and transcribing what other guys were playing on the same material.

When you say "technique exercises", what do you mean exactly? Sorry if it's a stupid question, but I'm learning here!
As someone who has just jumped in and started playing bass in the past and who is picking up the instrument again, I'd like to actually start learning how to play, not just "noodle around". I mean, picking up cover songs and such always came very easily to me, and I have a grasp of basic music theory and can read music, but I want to get on the road to mastering the bass (or coming as close as possible), both musically and with good technique. I may never play regularly in a band, but I don't care as long as I get to jam with friends once in a while. I'm interested in playing more for myself than for anything else, which is motivation enough to play well, IMO.

[BillyIVbass]

What are your overall goals? What are some bigger things you want to do with your playing? What are some small things you can do to sound better.

Personally I wanted to be able to play anything I heard. (Big)

Things I needed to get there

1) Ear training, recognizing pitches

2) Technique. I want to play what I hear, so I needed to increase my technique and be able to play cleaner and quicker.

That was just me. My routine was 10 minutes of ear training (boring midi interval training) 5-30 minutes on trying to transcribe a song (Start with easy rock songs), Technique (I settled on a 3-finger patterns really slow and clean and slowly gained speed)