technique

I am looking for a ergonomic and standard fingering that tells me, how to trasition between the different positions of the major scale on the neck with a efficient fingerings. What do I mean by strategically wise? There are certain ways to transition from one position of the major scale to...

I played fingerstyle for a while on my Höfner and have to say, even if it felt wrong in the beginning, I slowly became fond of the narrow spacing. It seems to enable me to play faster and more comfortably.. especially octaves and arpeggios. Not that the standard Jazz spacing would be...

Firstly: I love bass players who limit their approach to the instrument. Jamerson used only one finger throughout his career, Jaco limited himself to two fingers. No slap bass, no tapping. I am at a point in my learning life I am ready to take on pretty much anything, but I am not sure if it's...

I am a dyed-in-the-wool fingerstyle player. Always have been. Came over from DB where we didn’t need no steenkin’ picks, and never looked back. I’ve tried playing with them, and the results are laughable. Yet whenever I find myself playing air bass, I notice that I’m pretending to play with a...

Greetings. In the recent days I have noticed that endurance of both of my hands, left hand especially, decreased. After 1-2 minutes of playing I have to take a break for a few minutes for my hands to recover. I suspect that this happened because a little over a week ago I increased my practice...

Bulletproof Musician Article Bulletproof Musician has a great blog, and this post is especially worth reading. Playing different instruments under different conditions is a fact of life, so varying your technique practice routine makes sense -- it allows our technique to adapt to conditions on...

I've been practicing 3 finger for about 5-6 years. I can make steady even sound until 150 bpm but after that speed, it was always difficult for me to avoid that galloping or fast triplet sound. Maybe my brain rejected recognizing 3 finger into 16 beat. I uploaded one of my cover below. I...

Playing against drums or machines practice. Lately I have been recording and practicing to play dead on the beat/grid, and I mean to the millisecond and less, inspecting the waveform on the recorded material. I focus mainly on the downbeats and 8th up beats. On the 16th up beats I admit I give...

....and very intimidating to me. But, holy cow, it's friggin' awesome! Now I make good original music with my band, and have fun doing it, but I have nowhere near the chops that it takes to play like this. The song: The bass cover: Is it jazz? Something else? Something alien?

Quick one.... As I was getting a little practice/stress relief in on my fretless five before a 10+ hour Saturday Chef shift; the thought occurred to me that playing fretless in tune is not the fearsome feat many believe it to be. Case in point: I learned to play the trombone in 7th grade back...

Hi all. I’m fairly new to playing bass, 3 years off and on depending on mental health and life stuff. I play Rocksmith primarily and noodle along to the odd tab with a headphone amp, I don’t intend on joining a band or anything like that this is just purely a hobby. I appear to have run into a...

I have been interested in the sport of Arm-wrestling for a long time and have found a tournament near me to compete. Sadly though, I have had many family members and colleagues warn of potential danger. Does anyone have any thoughts on either side of the argument? For me doing it or not? I am in...

I play a fretless Fender American Professional Jazz Bass. Out of curiosity I recently decided to try tapewound strings for the first time. I bought LaBella black nylon strings (105 / 85 / 65 / 50). The issue I'm having is that I occasionally get an unwanted sound from my plucking fingers...

I've been fixing my muting technique when practicing double thumb, and it's difficult. When for instance fretting the (lower) B on the A string with my index, I've been muting the e-string with my middle finger. No right hand thumb muting/anchoring when double-thumbing. Very unnatural at first...

Does anyone have any advice on learning the pattern seems really confusing because it shifts across the beat

hello everyone, i've been teaching myself bass through online resources, SBL being one of them and although it is not great. because there is no sense of direction as a beginner and they assume that you would know where to start, although i did find a lot of the courses helpful and the...

I know this seems a very bassic (sic) question, but I've started to wonder whether I'm fretting strings correctly. Here's a fingertip. Please tell me which of the letters best corresponds to the place on your fingertip where you press the bass string to the fretboard. Thumbs up for helping!

I'm looking for a challenge, does anyone have any ridiculously hard Classical Pieces on bass.

Has anyone heard if this technique I found it in this book.

Hello fellow bass players, I saw some posts on this website that often label our funky monk as an overrated player, so i just thought It would be nice to tell you my opinion, and i hope you'll also let me know yours without any trouble :thumbsup: What i found Is that people tell he Is overrated...

As the title says.

I've been working on a fast triplet ghost note lick which has a double slap every time the lick repeats and I find that the double slap is holding me back from getting it up to speed but I don't know how to double slap faster apart from note bouncing off the string much and I find that some days...

I'm having issues with muting on this bass. I've been playing for 7 years, and I've owned and played a variety of basses, 4 strings and 5 strings (I'm primarily a 5 string player). I learned how to use good left hand technique and floating thumb early on, and I've had zero issues with muting...

This is boggling my mind, I seriously cannot wrap my head around it !! How does he do that ?! At the beginning, when the bass comes in, he does something INSANE with his fingers, can someone explain what's he even doing ? How ? I'm so jealous of the speed and dexterity of this man.

I'm a jazz musician mostly, and I only started playing on double bass last year. I notice that when I play a faster bass line, I sort of subconsciously start plucking like I would on my electric bass. (with a claw) I've had people tell me that it's the correct way to do it, and others tell me...

Hi, folks... Been playing fretless for about 20 years, mostly funk, some fusion and a few other things. In the last year or so I've been playing with a sextet that plays a lot of classic jazz. I'm not having any problems navigating it, but I've become acutely aware of a technique issue that I...

I've been playing upright for about 8 months right now, it's going well. When I play walking bass lines for more than 5 minutes straight, my left thumb starts to hurt. With songs that have more rests in between the notes this happens much less, it's the consistent motion that's hardest to...

Hey all. Just wondering if anyone else has this issue. For whatever reason, I seem to be far more comfortable playing with my plucking hand over the neck pick-up. It seems to have something to do with liking the fuller sound that it seems to give, and perhaps more so, I feel much more...

I've seen a lot of talk about palm muting, using a sponge, or using the other fingers on the left hand. Just experimenting and noodling I've found I can get a sort of muted sound by just playing right on, or even slightly in front of, the fret with my fretting finger. If I can get good at this...

I recently started playing fretless. I often check against an open string or harmonic to work on my intonation. This works well, leading to a better ear, as I need to know which interval I'm checking. It's also helped me better understand what I'm playing in a harmonic context. And it just makes...

I’ve been playing for close to 7 years and have mostly tailored my playing style and practice routine to fit into a band setting. Working on groove, timing ECT. Now It’s just me and I’d really like to work on stuff that I’ve always wanted to do, mainly work on speed, complexity, and...

Hey all, I'm new here. I have slightly larger than average hands, but when I've played a 6 string bass, it feels really difficult to use my 4th finger on my left hand to fret the low frets, like say, D#, on the B string. Also I notice that with the less curvature of my fingers on my left hand...

Hey Team! Long time member, but have been out of the game for quite awhile. Unfortunately life changed and I have been out of touch playing for a lonnnnggg time(just plucking here and there throughout the years). I started when I was 13, played every possibly minute I could until in my early...

Hi all, I'm new here (have lurked for years though) but from the searching I've done it doesn't look like there has been much attention given to the tremendous bass playing of Pink Cream 69's Dennis Ward. He's perhaps most known nowadays for his Youtube channel where he reacts to and (more...

This thread goes out to all of the bassists who slap by pulling up with their middle finger, rather than their pointer. Why do, or did you do this? Have you always done it? Or did you recently change? What was the reason you initially started doing it like this and what is the the reason you...

I've been learning bass (playing right handed) for a little while now and I like to think I've been steadily improving, but my right hand has always been something of a weak point. I feel clumsy with it, sometimes missing the string when switching quickly and I have trouble properly muting. My...

Hi All, My band is going to be playing the Cake cover of War Pigs which has a quick pulsing/throbbing bassline. As a converted guitar player I feel more comfortable playing this with a pick with palm muting. Curious if any of you may have some other suggestions on how to really nail this...

Am I doing something funny?

i’m not a very good singer, but i’m a pretty good bassist (i’d like to think!) and as per my inspirations, i’ve been lead to believe there’s not anything cooler than a singing bass player. i’m only 16 so probably i have to room to grow. if not, i can at least have fun trying! so, what’s any...

I didn’t for a long ass time, but now I do when the song calls for it.