Revolutionary Concepts

[iceberg]

What is something a teacher (or other player) had you practice that really improved your playing or made you think "OH! NOW I get it!".

I'll start it off with two. For me:

1. Singing along with my playing
2. Playing with a metronome on a regular basis

Your turn.

[SmokeyB]

Getting a 5-string.
My instructor urged one on me to help visualize chord progressions and relationships. Moving across the fretboard instead of shifting down made a big difference.

[snyderz]

Putting strings on my bass. Playing without strings was proving to be futile.

[onlyclave]

Playing classical double bass improved my electric bass tremendously.

Also, taking piano lessons for years was great too.

[DocBop]

Besides the other good suggestions I would add

Turning on radio and just playing along especially to songs or music I don't know. Teaches ear to quickly figure out the songs changes, pickup pieces of the bass line, and by end of song have an acceptable bass line. The is great ear training, learning to cop a style quickly, and how to refine a bass line while playing. This is a valuable money making skill. Bass players who can do gigs with or without charts or fakebook and get lots of calls for work. These same skills are useful at jams or coming up with parts for original material. Also playing to radio you learn current tunes that may be called at a gig.

Other thing is just spending time improvising alone. The best way to increase creative is set some strict restrictions and play. Like soloing on one string, no using adjacent strings, only within six fret area, using no roots, using one spec notes of scale, and on and on. Pick a restriction and play and see what you can come up with it really forces you to be creative and discover things about your instrument you normally wouldn't think of. I find it great to finish off my day by turning off the lights and playing in the dark. When you can't see your neck you start developing "feel" for where notes are that you are wanting to play. Also improving in the dark you start learning not fall into patterns/fingers. In dark you also focus more on sound and discover new sounds.

Using the bass in your head more. Practice without a bass and seeing in your head the fingerboard or figure out sheet music and "seeing" in your head where note is and how you would finger it is very educational. Again letting go of the physical instrument you discover new things and avoid falling into familiar patterns. Then working sightreading and transcribing while driving in car. Listen to a cool bass line on CD or radio while driving I will figure out what the notation for the rhythm which helps sightreading. I will then try to transcribe the line both notes and notation in my head.

Bottom line you can learn a lot even when you bass is at home.

[mantelclock]

Using the metronome on the 2 & 4 beat instead of the 1 & 3...

[JehuJava]

Originally Posted by mantelclock

Using the metronome on the 2 & 4 beat instead of the 1 & 3...

Good one! Try leaving out the second beat (or the first beat), too.

[DocBop]

Originally Posted by mantelclock

Using the metronome on the 2 & 4 beat instead of the 1 & 3...

Another cool exercise to develop the internal metronome is get a friend who want to work on time to practice with. Get a metronome you can turn the sound off/on or a computer one you can mute, but it will keep the beat going.

Then one controls muting of the metronome while the other plays. Find a simple two bass groove to play. Start playing it with the metronome on then once in the groove and time is good, then your partner should start turning click off for every other measure. Time still good now expand metronome on one measure and off three. See how well you holding the time when click is off, are you nailing the down beat when metronome comes back in. You can expand this out as much as you want metronome only every eight measures and so on. This builds up your inter-clock.

Another exercise is to take a simple one bar bass line like Billy Jean. Pick one you can move down neck to play around the 3rd fret or lower. Now with the metronome play three bars of the pattern, then on the fourth bar go up the neck a octave and play a fill. Idea is learn to feel/pre-think move up the neck, play fill, but a fill that not only is good, but one you can get out of and back on one to bass line to keep the groove going in time. If having a rough time at first start with two bars bass line, bar rest, bar fill, back to bass line. Then work to eliminate the bar of rest.

These types of exercises not only develop time, but help in shifting positions and if you screw up quickly getting back into the groove. Remember groove is number one more important than the quality of the fill. This is another over time try to avoid looking at neck and feel where those position jumps are. The less you look at your bass the more you can focus on the music you are playing.

[mambo4]

finally studying rhythmic notation in depth really helped me.

when I first started playing out, i could follow chord charts well but my rhythmic understanding was totally ear and memory. At times, when my ears and memory failed me, or when other bandmembers fudge a note , I found my self lost in time, unsure of my place in the music and playing with a less confidence and rhythmic 'togetherness'

I picked up reading via salsa bass study, and when I returned to pop/rock I found the ability to write the exact
rhythm I was coming up with invaluable. Now I knew without a doubt what I needed to play, and when things went wrong I knew if it was me or the drummer or whatnot. And even in the simplest syncopated lines my playing became much more tight.

[MarkTAW]

The 9th (?) fret harmonic pure 3rd hit me pretty hard, but then I quickly digested the sound and it wasn't so spectacular anymore. Try playing this: 7th fret D string, 5th fret E string, 9th fret A string harmonics for an A major chord. There's a purity to it that the fretted versions just don't quite match.

Playing different genres of music with completely different feels from what I'm used to & getting my fingers tied up and feeling myself hesitate before coming in on certain beats with the uncertainty of a beginner all over again, no matter how briefly the feeling lasts, and then settling in to the groove and owning it.

Realizing there was no magic to coming in after a long pause, you can subdivide the beat value and keep it going. I realized this after watching a drummer waving his spare drum stick as if he was hitting an imaginary hi-hat during the intro to on of our songs that had a lot of "air" in it. (Or maybe that is the magic.)

An exercise one of my music teachers gave me (in the one lesson I ever had with him) - play along with the click and practice not just the beats, but the offbeats, especially the 16th notes, such as "AH one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and AH one e and a two e three e and a four e and AH one" etc.

Singing solfege over a Tuning CD for the first time and really hearing the note relationships MUCH more clearly than with any equal temperament based method I'd used before.

Learning some artificial & modal keys and enjoying exploring them for their different flavors.

Studying the history of western music & knowing that some of the best musicians struggled with some of the same issues I'm struggling with now. That all the glib replies people toss about on forums such as these were things that centuries upon centuries of musicians & composers didn't use and that my own quirky beliefs about music are justified when you take a long enough perspective. So I don't feel as bad when I don't know offhand some bit of theory or other since odds are that bit of theory is only an infant in terms of the history of music.

Playing guitar & singing for the enjoyment of it. I have both a guitar & a bass near me and depending on my mood, I'll pick up either.

Playing with good musicians is always a revelation, but only when you click with them.

[Drifta]

i've been playing for almost 3 1/2 years now, tried lessons once and it was horrible, waste of time and money.

found me a great teacher now, had my first lesson last week.

it sounds simple and i wish i had thought to do this before, but here are a couple things he taught me in my first lesson(1 hr, but he taught me for over an hr and 1/2)

was to sing out the bass melody of every song i listen to, hum it, sing it and feel it. that and count the beats in everything i listen to.

he also gave me a schedule.

he wants me to play two notes a day. for instance one day i work on C/G as my root notes. Find where each c and g is, and what notes feel strong with them. develope lines/melodies with them.
next day is D/a, third E,B, then f#/C#, Ab/Eb , Bb/F and then 1 day a week he told me to put the bass down. but to still listen to music critically, singing the melodies and recognize where 1, 2,3, and 4 beats are at.

So far these have really helped my ear over the past few days and to be honest if i never saw the dude again these are some things i feel have affected my playing in a positive way for the rest of time.


he also explained to me that transcribing as many different songs/styles i like and want to be like will help me shape my own unique style. I think he's right.

[Drifta]

Originally Posted by mantelclock

Using the metronome on the 2 & 4 beat instead of the 1 & 3...

hah that would totally fug me up.

i started bass on reggae and in reggae the snare/rim/kick are all emphasised on the 3 (also known as one drop)

[HaVIC5]

Originally Posted by Drifta

hah that would totally fug me up.

i started bass on reggae and in reggae the snare/rim/kick are all emphasised on the 3 (also known as one drop)

Well, yeah, for a lot of styles the 2+4 metronome thing wouldn't work. If you were doing reggae, you'd probably set the metronome just to 3. For pop/rock, funk and jazz, 2+4 would be the best.

[Drifta]

Originally Posted by HaVIC5

Well, yeah, for a lot of styles the 2+4 metronome thing wouldn't work. If you were doing reggae, you'd probably set the metronome just to 3. For pop/rock, funk and jazz, 2+4 would be the best.

yes but to be honest, and since we're talking about good concepts, I think it would be wise for me to practice 2+4 because i don't want to be trapped in one genre, just because i started in it. thats one thing ym teacher told me was to learn variety and take what you like from different stuff and mold it into your playing(if you so choose to)

[Rattman]

Learning to luthier for my own bass needs. I think of an improvment or need a repair? I take it for "action" within the same day.. no delay, no hand-wringing.

Losing the plectrum most of the time

[matthewbrown]

Originally Posted by HaVIC5

Well, yeah, for a lot of styles the 2+4 metronome thing wouldn't work.

I tried that 2+4 thing on a waltz and barely made it through the tune!

[HaVIC5]

Originally Posted by matthewbrown

I tried that 2+4 thing on a waltz and barely made it through the tune!

Ha, yeah, that would end up being a 2/4 hemiola over 3/4. Weird stuff, crazy if you can feel it out.

[aussiebassdude]

Originally Posted by DocBop

Besides the other good suggestions I would add

Turning on radio and just playing along especially to songs or music I don't know. Teaches ear to quickly figure out the songs changes, pickup pieces of the bass line, and by end of song have an acceptable bass line. The is great ear training, learning to cop a style quickly, and how to refine a bass line while playing. This is a valuable money making skill. Bass players who can do gigs with or without charts or fakebook and get lots of calls for work. These same skills are useful at jams or coming up with parts for original material. Also playing to radio you learn current tunes that may be called at a gig.

Other thing is just spending time improvising alone. The best way to increase creative is set some strict restrictions and play. Like soloing on one string, no using adjacent strings, only within six fret area, using no roots, using one spec notes of scale, and on and on. Pick a restriction and play and see what you can come up with it really forces you to be creative and discover things about your instrument you normally wouldn't think of. I find it great to finish off my day by turning off the lights and playing in the dark. When you can't see your neck you start developing "feel" for where notes are that you are wanting to play. Also improving in the dark you start learning not fall into patterns/fingers. In dark you also focus more on sound and discover new sounds.

Using the bass in your head more. Practice without a bass and seeing in your head the fingerboard or figure out sheet music and "seeing" in your head where note is and how you would finger it is very educational. Again letting go of the physical instrument you discover new things and avoid falling into familiar patterns. Then working sightreading and transcribing while driving in car. Listen to a cool bass line on CD or radio while driving I will figure out what the notation for the rhythm which helps sightreading. I will then try to transcribe the line both notes and notation in my head.

Bottom line you can learn a lot even when you bass is at home.

+1,000,000!

That is some great advice!

[onlyclave]

Originally Posted by HaVIC5

Ha, yeah, that would end up being a 2/4 hemiola over 3/4. Weird stuff, crazy if you can feel it out.

Hemiola?!? That's some kind of blood thing!

[JTE]

It's subtle, but learning to use the metronome as a check, not a guide. Tha's part of why the 2 and 4 thing with a 'nome is so important, as are the suggestions to use the 'nome providing other beats. Your job as a bassist is to provide the pulse and groove. If you're relying on the 'nome (or the drummer or the guitard) to KEEP time you ain't doin' your job, pure and simple. If the 'nome hitting just the snare drum beats of 2 and 4 would "... really fug you up", then you NEED to learn to do it.

If the 'nome is providing all the beats you're not learning much about keeping time. And even worse is a drum machine that gives you this big huge busy groove. That'll help you learn different styles, but it's doing NOTHING for your time. You need to have the internal clock working reliably, and using the 'nome to provide one or two beats in a measure forces you to keep time. The point is to get to where you don't notice the 'nome because you're playing time correclty.

Another thing that was a huge impact was singing what I play. Not just the bass lines, but everything. Sing arpeggios and scales when you're practicing. Sing the note BEFORE you play it- teach your ear what sound to expect. That helps with the ear-training so much. And the idea to turn on the radio and just play along with whatever comes on is another investment that pays off huge.

But the best advice? "Less E-Bay, more Mel Bay". Get away from gear stuff and play the freakin' instrument!

jte