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Techniques you discovered yourself?

#21
I had to learn a lot of bass playing on my own. My early "mentors" set me back with horrible tips in the early days (it didn't help I didn't have an amp for a very long time either... I'd put the bass and my ear against the wall to hear better!). At the time I already knew how to play 8 instruments so I knew a lot about music but had a rough start on bass.

To get more articulation and consistency doing machine gun speed stuff on the B string, I started using T-R-M-I (and variants) accenting things via slap w/ thumb.

I'm not concerned about inventing new tricks or anything, just finding solutions for what I want or need to do. When I get deep into practice mode, I'm always thrilled at how much more ground there is for me to cover in terms of learning what can be done on this instrument. :cool:
 
#23
i learned how to do ghost or percussive notes by myself just from listening to duran duran.....this was before i was a practicing bass player and i was just trying to help my bass playing buddy learn some lines ....it just kinda fell into place for me

i also learned how to get a palm muting sound on guitar the same way rocco prestia does - by resting a finger ahead of the fretted note ....this was in my 1st year of guitar playing and my teacher was a spacey jazz guy who wasn't coming across with any rock tech info....and i didn't know the right questions to ask ...

of course palm muting worked way better when i learned to do it at the bridge ..the rocco tech worked ok for static muted power chords but i knew i couldn't get single note muted lines with it!


i remember asking my teacher how you get a heavy rock sound ...ala metallica or van halen ....he stared off into space for a minute and asked me what kind of amp i had .....fender deluxe reverb .....he said "turn it on 10" LOL .....no mention of overdrive pedals or distortion pedals

i went home and cranked the amp ....haha....it sounded like paper back writer or something ....and i thought it might blow up ....this wasn't what i was looking for....finally ..buddy on the school bus told me about distortion pedals and lent me his ....heavenly!
 
#26
BrandonBass said:
...What I did? I held the note but slowly turned the volume knob on my bass down w my right hand. Im not sure if its common, but I sure as hell havent seen anyone do it in person!!!
Click to expand...

It depends on your configuration. If You have a pedal featuring volume control, then it's simple. Another fading technique I developed, is touching the string at the saddle with one finger and slowly moving away from it. This gives you full control.
 
#28
I was playing power chords for a good 3 months before I knew that they were power chords. Two notes sounded good together so I just played them together. Then, about 9 months later, I found out that I had been playing 7th chords for the past month.
 
#29
Hammer ons/Pull offs. coming from a background in cello, where they were called slurs, and they were one of the first things I learned. my bass/guitar style uses (and perhaps abuses) this technique, because it allows me to fit more emotes in without having to pluck them. (really used to bowing strings, still not so good a plucking quickly with complex rhythms.) and building off of that tapping. I was fooling around and I was like "holy S**t I can just fret the note and it will sound!" I never though I had invented the techniques, but I learned them completely on my own. my bass/guitar playing is pretty much entirely self taught, though I've gotten tips here and there from professional bassists.
 
#30
Maintaining a click track for the rest of the band at the same time I play my parts. One of my strengths is being a human metronome. The whole band, including the drummer follows me. So when needed, I pluck a muted string for the click in the given tempo, but I'm still able to play my bass lines.
 
#31
Ian the bassist said:
Making my bass feedback like a raygun firing, ....
Click to expand...

I found out I could make my Washburn acoustic fretless feed-back like mad. I used to scare people at the airport bar with it by producing a sound that is exactly like a small plane dive-bombing the building. Good times. Actually had people running one time.
Also, started on fretless long before I'd heard of Jaco(people said I sounded like him so I sought him out and was surprised). I was trying to ape Pino, from those Don Henley tunes.
Then I was doing the downward fingernail strikes on the strings, and was told I was copying Geddy Lee. Didn't know.
 
#36
Pushing buttons on a remote control near the pickups. Vibrator slide. Banging the body of the bass with a palm and messing with the volume.

My finger-picking style is a little odd. Thumb and index attack opposite sides of a string. Still sure someone else probably named it 30 years ago.
 

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