Double Bass Putting it all together.

[devink919]

Hi there everyone. I'm new to this community so I'll share a little about myself. My name is Devin and I'm a 21 year old female who loves whiskey and Psychobilly. *tips hat* I've been playing upright bass for about 4 months now I would say. I've learned the numerous walks, chord progressions (C-F-G,etc.), and corresponding minor keys. I know I have a long road ahead and I intend to stick to it. My main goal throughout this journey is to play some fast Psychobilly. I'm talking Mad Sin! style. When it comes to actually applying my knowledge I've learned I feel a bit lost. I've found numerous videos on youtube that teach slapping style. So far the single, double, and triple slaps come to me. I'm looking for something that shows me all kinds of slaps and how to put everything together. Like a drag triplet, and whatnot. What would you suggest for me to check out to help me along in this journey? When I listen to something like, for instance, Nekromantix-Nekrofelia, I hear a certain slapping sound that I can't understand what he is doing. I guess I'm just looking to further my techniques and really understand what is going on in the fast-paced Psychobilly sounds. When it comes to actually tying together everything I know, I feel a little lost. Sorry if any of this comes across confusing! :/ Any advice would be helpful! Thanks.

 

[RockinBones]

I'd suggest watching double bassists in as many bands as possible, psychobilly, rockabilly or otherwise. If you can see them live, its worth trying to grab them after the show to get some advice as well (often easier with the support bands). But I've learned quite a lot about practical application of the various techniques you often end up learning separately by just watching and talking to other bassists at shows. It can be quite inspiring as well, just to see how good some people are and give you something to aim for. You do sometimes look a bit weird standing still trying to make out a slap technique when everyone else is going for it to the band though...

If you don't live anywhere that gets bands passing through, you can still sometimes pick things out on Youtube as a lot of the time cameras focus on the double bassists quite a bit

 

[DMH2]

Doesn't seem like there's much here for psychobilly, I'd head over to www.DoubleBassChat.com and take a look around there too.

 

[Ruuumble]

Hey - I'll put in my two cents as I've been in same boat, and hell chick bassists is cool so maybe it'll help. So anyway here are my personal opinions on it-

No1- every individual brings something different to their instrument. I'm always amazed how the same piece of music on the same instrument sounds different in two different players hands. It's one of the beautiful things about playin music

No2 the instrument, the way it's setup, the kind of strings, the way it's recorded- especially w UB there is such a variance

No3 sometimes it's useful to learn the roots of a players sound- though it's simpler - I.e listen to music that influenced that player to find the basis of their style - often most of their tricks they've learned from somewhere

No4 really fast passages are hard to figure out no doubt - if you haven't already try this - windows media player has a playback speed setting in the "enhancement"tab - it really is excellent for slowing things down without de-tuning the notes themselves. I guarantee you'll be surprised at the nuances and detail you'll hear and makes it easy to follow then learn it then bring it up to speed-the bonus - you'll learn to play the fast stuff correctly and not just a speedy, sloppy, approximation.

No5 - throw all of it out the window and work on developing your own sound&style- depending on your ultimate goal of playing music - at some point your ear becomes totally trained and you realize everything you hear fits into certain patterns of chords / scales / notes / rhythms then the challenge becomes how to originally apply them in your own unique way. In other words back to point 1 - full circle!

 

[BeowulfKingsley]

Two tools that have helped me a lot have been the DVD "Slapology" by Nicolas Dubouchet - great player and a really useful series of lessons, he does help in putting it together. The other was the book "Rockabilly Slapbass" by Didi Beck. He has a very well organised method and includes some Psychobilly patterns as well as a lot of other good stuff...including some good basic theory and bass line building. Hey, this instrument's a monster, but it's a lot of fun too! Good luck with it.