Mental process while playing

[Pings Bass]

Practice it all until you know it implicitly, then forget it and play what sounds good.

It's taken me a lifetime, and I'm still not 100% there, but man it feels good when you're making beautiful music and you have no idea what notes or chords you're playing, and you look down and your hands just know exactly what to do.

 

[mjnyc]

This guy taught me everything I know.

Is he still accepting students?

 

[SLPimp]

Is he still accepting students?

Only for trombone and coronet.

 

[JimmyM]

I always think about what I have to pick up at the store after the gig or what girls I might have a chance with if I were still single, unless I'm on a reading gig with unfamiliar material. Took a long time working at it to get to that point, but I've found that reading and solid chord theory helped me get there a lot quicker so that's what I recommend.

 

[NOVAX]

Tetris!

 

[NOVAX]

I always think Kesslari actually looks like John Astin. The power of the internet!

 

[ELG60]

Welcome to Talkbass. Interesting question to which I'll have to give some thought. One idea which comes to mind is that it is partly situational. My mental approach will be different for a jam with songs and musicians with whom I'm not familiar, than with songs I've practiced and players with whom I've rehearsed.

 

[Williethump]

Great thread. I'm an elderly retired student bassist with tinnitus and arthritis. Never played with others and I'm only halfway through Progressive Bass after two years. I love improv and neck-noodling. Dont know the fretboard much and I know chords are the gateway drug to nirvana but I ain't there yet. I'm still at the scales stage and staying tonic. I love the 12-bar, 1-4-5 blues, so easy even this cave man can play it. I need the finger box patterns and the TAB, addict me. I should read the next two chapters; on playing 1-4-5 with the root higher than the 4 and the 5; and playing scales and chords on one string. But rote learning is harder for us olds (he whined). I just love to run up and down the neck playing blues, pentatonic, major, minor, whatever I feel; it all sounds like music. Rather than working my way through a breakthrough new way to play. I desperately need music right now as therapy so I'm putting off learning in favor rank hedonism. I gots to have it. Good thread.

 

[bassliner50]

I watch the measures go by, trying to be alert for repeats, D.S. al coda, sine, etc. Trying to turn pages without missing a note. (hammer on with left hand, while turn page with wet thumb and forefinger of right).

 

[mambo4]

Bruce Lee said "consciousness of self is the greatest enemy"

Theory, chord tones, scales - all things I consider waaay before a performace. Whether crating my own line or playing chart or as written, I need to know how the line fits into theory in order to understand it best as I can.

The process of preparing for a gig is a (hopefully) disciplined conversion of the mental understanding to a physical and aural understanding. I want to become instinctively familiar with how it feels to play and what it sounds like.

At gig, if I did my homework, I can hopefully have no mental process whatsoever. I just listen deeply and respond at a purely emotional level.

There is a level you can reach, after all the thinking and practicing and listening, where all your attention is completely absorbed by the music, and everything else falls away. I've only reached that total flow state a few times, and barely remember it after. But it was a blissful.

Knowing that state is possible guides my aproach: study theoretically, practice thouroughly, listen deeply, play emotionally, experience directly. Everything is aimed a getting any conicious thought process out of the way.

 

[thetragichero]

hopefully this doesn't get to long...
so i learned to play by ear (the six months of guitar lessons i took at 12 years old were boring even though the instructor tried to do his best to keep me engaged by teaching me how to read tabs and tabbing out some of the songs of the time, so i didn't practice) mainly to play in punk bands in high school. i listened to a LOT of music up until my 30s (listen to almost none now) which i think plays a part in infusing "the language" (same thing as if you want to be a writer, read a lot)
i never actually improved until the past few years when i began playing (and practicing!) regularly for church. a lot of times i'm picking up the bass (more often guitar now, which frankly isn't nearly as fun but the new church came with a 17 year old bassist and it's not my place to discourage another player. instead i'm getting out of my comfort zone and playing lead guitar) to learn new songs, but sometimes it's just to mess around (beyond the scope of this thread, but that's mainly how i write songs: just dinking around with a bass or guitar)

so to your question: my mind is in different places learning songs, at rehearsal, and performing
learning songs i listen to the version we're playing with the chord chart in front of me. i listen for the "signature parts" and make sure to learn those but also "listen" to parts that my head feels are 'missing' (while there are exceptions a lot of the bass parts are simple low notes, easy point of entry stuff for beginners). so practicing is a lot of learning the different sections of the songs and then coming up with some of my own ideas (the biggest emphasis is learning the song structure)

for rehearsal i'm listening to the rest of the band, especially the drummer, and seeing if any of my ideas fit. sometimes a lot gets scrapped, a lot of time i'm hearing the drums and trying to put notes to the fills. REALLY fun locking in rhythmically with the drum fills while giving them a voice. rehearsals are where i figure out where to step up or step back depending on what the arrangement needs. thankfully i'm generally given the leeway to know when i can let 'er rip and when i should pound whole notes

for performance, i basically have nothing going through my mind. i trust my preparation and lose myself in the music. that's where good preparation comes in. moment before i step on stage my mind goes blank, half the time i forget what we're about to play. and that's the beauty of it. i get a whole 20 or 30 minutes or more where i'm not worrying about how we're going to make rent next month or the house that's falling apart around us or way bigger problems going on. i get absolute freedom

so yeah, not sure if that really answers your question but thank you for coming to my TED talk

 

[brianrost]

My mental process varies depending on well I know the song. If I've played it for years in a few different keys, there is no thinking any more. When a tune I've never played before gets called on a gig, I'm thinking a lot

If you are not singing along as you practice lines, try it. It helps cement the link between muscle memory and your ear.

 

[mjnyc]

Again great info... everybody so helpful here!

In a way I feel like everybody is sort of aiming for the same intuitive, in-the-flow state but taking different paths to approach it, some strolling, some zipping along...

Love it.

mj

 

[sawzalot]

About 25+ years ago I took lessons from a very well-known and incredibly talented bassist. He gave me tons of exercises but the most useful for this sort of thing were playing modes over two-octaves and two octave 7th chord arpeggios. These two kinds of exercises involve shifts on the fretboard that will train you to find the notes you want, when you want them, and where you want them. It is never too early or late to start learning this stuff and it pays off in spades.

 

[PlatoFunFactory]

Just want to say that I love this question and I love this community and the excellent variety of responses.

Sure, on the surface we’re a bunch of gear-heads obsessed with the perfect signal chain but roiling underneath it all is this wonderful fount of meaningful knowledge and a willingness to share it. Y’all rock.

 

[Killing Floor]

I’ve been playing decades and I find plenty I need to work on. And I play guitar too and that whole surprise B string that doesn’t fit the pattern, don’t get me started. Anyway, if I am practicing I spend about half of my time working the boring but important stuff and the other half doing songs and writing and showy stuff. Don’t get discouraged. Don’t chase perfection. Just set small goals that you can achieve. Have fun. Only reason to quit is if it’s not fun.

 

[Matty Koff]

I’ve been playing decades and I find plenty I need to work on. And I play guitar too and that whole surprise B string that doesn’t fit the pattern, don’t get me started. Anyway, if I am practicing I spend about half of my time working the boring but important stuff and the other half doing songs and writing and showy stuff. Don’t get discouraged. Don’t chase perfection. Just set small goals that you can achieve. Have fun. Only reason to quit is if it’s not fun.

I mean.. without that pesky B you'd have to have 6 fingers for a minor barred chord. 0.o

 

[gtirard]

I think it's always good to study one approach deep, then another approach, then to mix them, it's great when several approaches "merge". Like a previous user said earlier, you add new vocabulary.

A few months ago, I took a class of fretboard visualization at Scott Bass Lessons, it was really great.

 

[ga_edwards]

My mental process depends on the song and how I learned it. Some songs I learned by ear, some by chord charts, some by tab years ago, some as patterns, some as notes, some as riffs, sometimes a mixture of different techniques. How I think and even how I look at the neck changes.

 

[lark_z]

Thanks! Actually, this brings up another question I have. If you're moving from say the I chord up to a V chord, do you shift the whole "box" up two frets so that the root is now on the V, which makes playing a pattern easier, or do you try to stay in the original box with the root on the I and choose different notes to play a V chord (which seems pretty complicated to me).

mj

Doesn't this depend on which chord you're shifting to? If it's a R, IV, V chord - these are majors and the same box will fit, meaning that that shifted box with still hit notes from the root note major scale (assuming this is a major key). If it's something else, like the ii, vi then it takes a different chord, like a minor or the new box doesn't hit the scale tones of the root scale. A theory book will help.