I thought I knew the neck

[JonathanPDX]

Link to your TED talk?

 

[BassChuck]

One of the negative parts of EB playing is falling into 'patterns'. Rather than practicing without using a certain string, practice the bass line starting at a different place on the neck. You might have to adjust your bass line by changing octaves on a couple notes, but it will get your mind to work on knowing the neck better. And actually, knowing the neck is a life-long process.

 

[dbsfgyd1]

Today at practice the D string broke and I thought, I know where all the notes are on the neck I can get through.
Well that wasn't exactly true.
My fingers kept wanting to go where they were used to going and it was damned hard to convince them to go to the other places the notes were.
It got me to thinking about practicing as if there was a broken string.
I'd like to hear who's also thought about this and done it.

J.Z.

Of course it’s awkward. Repetitive tasks are programmed into your brain Much like Google. You open your browser and there is what it thinks you’re going to click on. Or in your case, you open your song file and your brain is a.ready wired for you to play that note on the D string.

I’ve been playing bass for better than a half a century and this is exactly why I don’t play the same songs on different basses..For me it leads to confusion and mental stress.

But, I do change my strings after about 75 hours of use, so I always have a few temporary strings around in case one breaks. This something that I haven’t done in over 20 years, but if it does, taking two minutes to swap out a string is a whole to less stressful than trying to reprogram a very stubborn brain waive macro….