Greetings

Hello everyone,

My name is Nic. I've been playing bass for almost a year now, and am looking for tips and techniques to improve my playing. A little about me:

My parents started me off with piano lessons when I was young and I played for about 10 years. I had one of those teachers that pounded the theory into my head, and didn't really let me get to play what I would have liked to at recitals. I got burned out in the middle of high school (and my folks didn't feel like funding an unmotivated musician any more). So I ended up taking a few years off from music. During college, I felt an urge to start playing music again, and picked up my dad's old dusty Epiphone accoustic 6-string guitar and started teaching myself chords and scales. When I graduated (2011), the graduation present was an Epiphone G400 (think Gibson SG), and I learned a lot of classic rock and blues rock songs on that beauty. I focused primarily on rhythm, but I could inject a pretty speedy solo every now and then.

Then I discovered the awesomeness that is John Entwistle, and next thing I know I'm driving home from Guitar Center with a Ibanez GSR-200 and a 15W Acoustic practice bass amp. As I self-taught myself how to play bass, I found alot of the theory from blues guitar and even my piano days carried over very easily to an "Ox-ish" playstyle, and I was thumping out basslines pretty quickly.

However, I feel like I've hit a ceiling, and I'm trying to figure out how to move past that. Again, I self-taught myself so I did what felt "natural" and maybe not what's "correct" so I suspect a lot of it is wrong technique and I'll have to buck those habits. Some of the things I'm looking to correct is pretty bad fretting/plucking clank, hand positioning, and a more fluid right hand motion. I'm also looking into pedal effects and a better amp, since my little practice amp isn't really that great sounding. I might post a video so the experienced guys can critique it. Looking forward to the tips!

 

Thanks for the warm welcome!

No current plans to gig (I have to get better first ), so I don't need a big amp. I do need an improvement over my 15W, because I'm not getting the tone I want with it. Right now, I'm more interested in getting the tone right before getting the volume up to performance levels.

I suspect the clanking could be an action height issue or possibly me hitting the strings a little too hard. I'm already trying the trick where you crank the amp up so its doing all the work and forcing to me play gently. It seems to be helping me get a clearer notes out.

I feel like my rhythm is pretty solid. Playing on regular electric guitars definitely helped with that. I use the original recordings of a song as Play-a-longs (along with tabs) to learn a song. I also use FL Studio every now and then to make my own drum track then record rhythm guitar on top to make a backing track to jam out on.

Here's a clip of me: