Playing fast metal

[snowblind554]

I recently started playing bass back a couple months ago and joined a metal band. My main instrument is cello and I also play guitar, so already being a trained musician and knowing theory, I picked up bass very quickly.

My problem is building speed. I've been doing the tried but true method of playing slow with a metronome and gradually upping the tempo but am wondering how long it generally takes to play cleanly and accurately at high tempos like 150-200bpm. I see thrash, metalcore, and death metal guys playing sixteenths at absurd tempos and it seems damn near impossible to me. I'm very patient and not looking for shortcuts, but it's really got me wondering what a realistic timetable is for being able to play like that. 3 years of dedicated practice maybe? Any advice when it comes to technique would definitely be appreciated too.

 

[JonathanPDX]

Could you share a video of your playing? Ideally at a slower tempo and at a faster more difficult speed?

There are a lot of little things when it comes to technique, everything from pressure to posture to the angle of your bass. By blindly guessing at what might be slowing you down most folks will recommend the same old stuff: practice slow, practice clean, build muscle memory, speed comes with time.

To really figure out how YOU as an individual can improve you'll either need to sit down with a teacher who can evaluate your technique, or give us some personal information (IE a video) so we can look for things you can improve on.

 

[bassGtar]

Depends on if you’ve got that particular talent. Do you play guitar/cello successfully at fast tempos? Don’t try to put a square peg in a round hole.

 

[SoCal80s]

I assume you're using a pick, right?

 

[ihixulu]

I appreciate Alex Webster's approach to playing fast with fingers.

The following excerpt is from here: Alex Webster: to the extreme

Did you always play with three fingers?

When I started, I played fingerstyle with two fingers, and not very fast. I could get going to a respectable speed, but not something crazy like Jeff Berlin or Juan Alderete. But then we did a show with Cynic and Malevolent Creation. Cynic’s bass player, Tony Choy, played with three fingers, and Malevolent Creation’s bassist plucked with four. I said, “I have to be able to keep up, and I’m not going to use a pick. I have to be able to figure out how to do it with my fingers.”

Around that same time, I was listening to Sadus a lot, which is the band that Steve DiGiorgio originally came from. I could tell the bass was played fingerstyle, and it was really fast. I managed to track down Steve’s phone number, so I called him up and asked, “Dude, how do you do that?” He explained his technique, which was going from the ring finger to the middle to the index back to the middle—there’s your four notes. I was very grateful, and we’ve been friends ever since. I tried to learn that way and got it down, but as I would start to drift off in doing muscle-memory practice, my technique would start to fall into a different technique. That was the one that I described in the book, where it ends up being a 12-note cycle [see Ex. 1]. You’re basically playing a triplet pattern, but it ends up feeling like straight 16th-notes. So Steve’s tip helped get me started, but I ended up developing my own thing.