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What are you practicing right now?

#62
Home recording, which is practice in it's own right.

Especially when doing a DI track, it really stresses you to work hard on making a perfect run through each section. Every start of every measure has to be right on the beat to the millisecond, and every note has to be pristine in its attack and sustain. Otherwise, your part just gets swallowed up in the mix.

This kind of activity really makes you shine as a player; I always hear myself playing better and cleaner after a recording cycle.
 
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#63
IconBasser said:
Home recording, which is practice in it's own right.

Especially when doing a DI track, it really stresses you to work hard on making a perfect run through each section. Every start of every measure has to be right on the beat to the millisecond, and every note has to be pristine in its attack and sustain. Otherwise, your part just gets swallowed up in the mix.

This kind of activity really makes you shine as a player; I always hear myself playing better and cleaner after a recording cycle.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing, Bro. I record every time I practice, no matter how good the quality will be. Sometime, with DI through the DAW. Sometimes, just with the webcam or camera. I don't feel any stress at all, because I have done that for years.

I found 2 pros for doing that after years:
1. You actually see yourself in audience's point of view. At the end of the day, I watch my own videos, and see what need to be focused in the next practice.

2. Another pro in the future, you can see how much you improve time after time by checking the old videos. That's a huge motivation for keeping practice :)
 
#71
I'm working on speed when changing strings. In my band's song there's this bass lick in a bridge before chorus... Somehow I always miss the G string and pluck the air instead :banghead: Does anyone know exercises that can help me land this lick?
ugboSZu.png
 
#73
Flippy said:
I'm working on speed when changing strings. In my band's song there's this bass lick in a bridge before chorus... Somehow I always miss the G string and pluck the air instead :banghead: Does anyone know exercises that can help me land this lick?
ugboSZu.png
Click to expand...

I'll be that guy... metronome.

Use a metronome. Start around q=60 or 100. Stupidly slow. Agonizingly slow. Nail it sitting, standing, eyes closed.

Slowly raise the tempo, practice it in 10-15 minute increments, take frequent breaks, maybe 5-10 times per day, and force yourself to slowly increase tempo over a couple days.
 
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#74
these days: almost all of my practicing attends to the occasional tricky passage/fingering or, most often: keeping my chops (the body parts of chops) intact due to aging. i no longer practice things like "speed" for it's own sake. i'm now more into the economy of motion and efficiency.

"i may not be as fast as i used to be...but then, i'm not as slow as i used to be, either!" --- jozell s. carter
 
#75
Thesedays I practice basics which I feel are indispensable but often taken for granted: evenness of tone, time, a relaxed posture.

And I've started learning how to play walking bass. I'm very confident in my knowledge of harmony and music theory in general, but I've never learned how to do it. About to start a wedding band with some jazz leanings, and walking is expected of me. Nothing too fancy, but I still want to do my best. I'm using the instructionals of Ed Friedland and Bob Magnusson, I find they both use a different way of going about it that complements each other very well.
 
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#77
I am merely practicing developing plucking speed. Alternate plucking i-m or m-i but occasionally breaking it up with just middle as I have always lead with my index and tend to rake so my middle is nowhere near as good as my index when the shizzle hits the fizzle.

At work yesterday, I did it periodically all day on one string since I have a P there, which is not my regular string spacing and those couple of millimeters will complicate things until I get this down (I think I'm actually faster with the wider spacing). It's also a much more fun way to practice scales... 2 or 4 16ths per note, up one string at whatever speed- with a good drum beat rather than metronome.

Today at home I'm adding the old RR-55-88-55. I can maintain 105 bpm 16ths seemingly forever, adding sprints here and there so I can get the speed way up but not at the expense of evenness and endurance. I was reminded to work on this due to a Chili Peppers song where Flea was doing the RR-88 at a good tempo and I couldn't even come close. And props to JLOCH86 and his video of Joe Jackson's "Stepping Out" in Transcriptions- for inspiring me up to that speed, with the big shifts. It's a shame that I can play but I've never sat down to work on plucking speed/evenness so it lacks. I've always done the disco thing RR-8 or R-88 (2 16ths and and 8th or vice versa rather than 4 16ths). I'd like to get to the point where all of my playing is strictly alternate but it's been difficult since I always go back to raking or leading index when I play songs that learned that way.

By the way, don't forget to stretch... long stretches. I'm doing plenty of arm, hand and finger stretching. Had tendinitis last year and it is ZERO fun for months!
 
#78
Music theory...music theory...music theory. Lol I've actually taken up learning songs on piano just to help me understand notes and the placement so I can transcribe it on bass.
 
#80
Reading music and learning to write music...should have done it yrs ago..
Been playing for 40yrs and two years ago took the plunge..not easy but its re-invigorated my enthusiasm for bass more than I could have imagined.
 
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