Bass Fitness: Part B @ 70bpm in 8ths
- 30
- Holding a finger down for these exercises is a pain in the butt! This is harder than I thought it would be.
- Some of these stretches are physically painful so I'm going to avoid them, or move them a bit so they are more comfortable. For example, I'm holding the 4th note on the B string, and playing note 1, 2, and 3 on the G string is quite painful for me given that I'm playing a 5 string with 19mm spacing on the strings. So I might alter it to hold my pinky on the 4th note on the E or A string, depending on comfort. I'm going to have to ask Anthony about some of this stuff.
I'm actually running into this too. I used to do stuff like this back when I played a four-string, and I think I have a pretty good reach overall...but on my six, the B to C stretch is difficult and seems to be leading to some issues. I've decided to try it on five of my six strings and work up to the six-string stretch - I can do the exercise, but I definitely feel as though I'm overextending in many cases.
One stretch exercise that helped me a lot early on was the spider stretch, like so:
G 1---4---3---2---
D -----------------
A -----------------
E 3---2---1---4---
I'd choose my upper and lower string and it helped me stretch my fingers and the palm of my hand. I would hold each chord for a whole note at a slow tempo. This can be applied to any stringed instrument and can be practice between any pair of strings.
(This does not, however, address the stretch between two directly adjacent fingers like in the exercise, and that's the hard part.)
I've been having difficulty with "staying on task" with this whole pandemic/self-quarantine thing. Usually, I enjoy the schedule of coming home from work, digging in to practice, and then going to bed. Working from home and then practicing.... well I've turned out to be a bit more wishy-washy than I expected of myself. The solution is to focus on being more disciplined and diligent about practice, even in the face of days blurring together.
Yeah, I hear you. For me, I've just been trying to have non-zero days - so every day, something will happen, even if it's less than optimal. I set up a practice space for myself, but I've actually found myself running finger dexterity with the TV on - again, maybe I'm ADD or something, but having something on the background sometimes helps me "zone out" if that makes sense. (There are fewer smaller distractions so I'm able to focus on what I'm doing. I've always been like this - drawing during a lecture, etc.) I think it helps me with patience, really. It's not ideal for learning or intense focused practice, but I'm able to do drills with less tedium and so it's helped me maintain a daily drill habit. Maybe something similar could help? Mixing your reward time with your bass time? Or maybe it's a bad idea, I dunno.
At any rate, yeah, hard time for all of us with habits being altered, etc. Hang in there. And I agree with @Rilence - your journaling has inspired me to try to be better, and I love following this thread. Improving on bass is a lifelong marathon, so no worries about temporary stumbles as long as you keep going. Good luck, stay safe.
Because of this, I think that I'll incorporate this week's time dedicated to the SBL stuff into the Bass Fitness stuff for double bang for the buck points.
