Any tips on playing the up-beat?

[Dlew919]

All great advice. I’d add clapping it out before you play the bass. Good luck. You’ll get it.

 

[andrewjazzy]

 

[JeezyMcNuggles]

Hey y'all. I've been playing bass for only a little over a year and I've got this bass tab (pic below) and I cant get the feel for playing the "up-beat" (if that is what you call it - I come from the DJ world).

Anyway, I feel like such a spaz trying to just play the "and."

Any tips?

Thank you.
Rich

View attachment 5375184

Rest hit rest hit rest hit

 

[salmon256]

I struggle a lot with timing. Use your foot, nod your head to it, print it out and write it out on top of the notes "1 and 2 and 3 and 4" etc, and most of metronome!

Good luck, you got it!

 

[retslock]

Hey y'all. I've been playing bass for only a little over a year and I've got this bass tab (pic below) and I cant get the feel for playing the "up-beat" (if that is what you call it - I come from the DJ world).

Anyway, I feel like such a spaz trying to just play the "and."

Any tips?

Thank you.
Rich

View attachment 5375184

Slow it way down. This is possibly the single most valuable technique to learning difficult passages. Use a metronome or drum machine at a tempo slow enough for your brain to deal with the space between the notes. Count out loud “1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and ” etc. play on the “and”. Don’t increase tempo until you can do it at a slow tempo. If you’re fumbling you’re going too quickly. Go slower until you get it right.

 

[Krakmann]

Salud!

Don't know if this has already been said: just hit the string with the finger on the empty beats, without plucking, and pluck in the "and". Hit-pluck, hit-pluck, hit-pluck. When this is internalized, just lighten the hit to avoid its percusive sound.

 

[brianrost]

Hey y'all. I've been playing bass for only a little over a year and I've got this bass tab (pic below) and I cant get the feel for playing the "up-beat"

Just listen to the recording for a while. Try singing the rhythm (if not the notes, too). Then without the recording, sing the rhythm. Then go start playing it at a slow tempo on the bass.

 

[ShadowGroover]

I flip the foot tap upside down while playing 1 2 3 4.

1 up
2 down
3 up
4 down

It's so easy to "swing" that motion with 2 and 4 becoming the "downbeat"

Tough to describe this. It's totally a 'feel" concept

 

[Rich Gags]

Thank you so much for all your responses! They are a big help. Cheers!!

 

[bfields]

I'll just say that at a year isn't long to be playing, and with almost two full measures of nothing but upbeats, it's perfectly normal to struggle at first with a bassline like that.

It may feel frustrating that you can't just do it already, and step-by-step methodical approaches like suggested in https://www.talkbass.com/threads/any-tips-on-playing-the-up-beat.1642894/#post-28255938 may feel like overkill, but--do just take it one step at a time, try to stay relaxed and be patient with yourself, and it will get easier.

 

[Drop1]

Of you know how to program a simple beat, loop a bar of s 4/4 kick. Put snare on the 2 and 4, put hi hats on the off beats. Then just play along with the hi hat.

Once you can easily do that, start thinking about the note timing when listening to music. Tap you trigger finger (index) to the off beat. Things will naturally just get better from there.

If you are still djing, you can take 2 tracks, use a sparse area and stagger the kicks so one is on the 1 and the other the "and". Used to do that a lot on vinyl before all this new digital stuff came out. Can create a drum roll type effect.

Another way to think about it is think of it as deleting the down beats instead of playing the up. So you can think of it as playing 8th notes and removing the down beats.

It gets easier.