Bass Nation

This past Monday was my birthday and the icing on the cake was our Monday night band practice. I had a really great birthday celebration with my wife and daughter and then it was off to play some rock and roll! We had to take last week off because our drummer hurt his arm, so I had a whole extra week to practice on my own and I think it paid off. I don’t really get to practice the upright much at home, so most of my practicing is done unplugged on my Fender.

Something that’s really helped my playing is a book by Victor Wooten called The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music. It’s written as a novel about a mystical music teacher who shows up and teaches him a new way to approach the music, and some of that stuff is slightly painful, but what he actually teaches is incredibly helpful.

The most important thing is that the groove is more important than the actual notes. Since your typical scale is made up of 7 notes and there are 12 whole tones per octave, you’ve got more than a 50/50 shot at hitting the right note, and if you hit the wrong one it’s easy to use that to get to the right note and still make it sound right as long as you’re playing in the groove.

There’s other stuff about how to practice more effectively and a whole lot more which I haven’t even gotten to yet, but just the bit I have read has helped me greatly and I would recommend this book to anyone who plays any instrument.

Anyway, here’s an MP3 of us covering King Crimson’s Easy Money. I’m on the upright and there’s a brief bowed part during the jam. To the casual listener it might sound like just another rock song, but those who know music will be able to tell right away that the time on this one is a little bit crazy. During the verse, the vocals are in a different time signature as everything else. I don’t know how John Wetton managed to sing that one and play bass at the same time when I can barely sing harmonies during the intro (I didn’t even attempt that this time).

Easy Money

When I first heard Primus, I thought that it would be impossible to ever attempt to play bass like Les Claypool. But when you slow it down and break down the parts, it’s not that hard to learn and master with a lot of practice. Playing that and singing at the same time is a whole different story. So below is a nice breakdown of the first song on the first Primus album, minus the Rush sample intro. And here’s a clip of the original to compare.

Odd time signatures and polyrhythms are fun to play around with. It’s not going to make people dance. It could possibly create whiplash if you’re headbanging to it. It will make your progressive music that much more progressive and interesting. Rather than try to explain it myself, I turn you over to a drummer. And not just any drummer. Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy is the perfect music geek to help demonstrate how this sometimes difficult mathy stuff works in practice.

So last night I got about an hour of amplified practice in with my new electric upright bass. I’m not sure why I thought I’d have such a seamless transition. I had played a higher end version of the instrument that I got at a jam session last fall. It was a shorter scale one, so it was really easy to play. Mine is a full scale neck, so especially up top the notes are really far apart. It’s a physical impossibility to play the same way as I would my bass guitar. There’s more sliding involved, which sounds amazing on an upright. My upright is one of the ones with dot on the neck to show you where the notes are. A lot of bassists consider this cheating, but I consider it a necessity, at least at this point. So we played a few songs and I really had to strip it down to the most simplistic lines as possible. There’s one song that involves quite a bit of left hand fingering and that was the one where my intonation really needs work. Otherwise I wasn’t too bad. I’m definitely going to need to put a lot of practice time into this thing, and hopefully take a lesson or two. For now, here’s a beginners’ lesson from YouTube:

When I first got my Fender Musicmaster bass, there was a little plastic thumb rest that was over the strings, right above the pickup. The idea was that you could rest your thumb there and then your fingers would be in the “correct” position for playing. The thing is, there are lots of different correct positions depending on what kind of sound you’re looking for. You get a different sound playing closer to the neck, or right over the pickup, or closer to the bridge. I eventually removed that thumb rest to gain versatility and my thumb usually rests on the edge of the pick guard, my forearm rests on the body, and as I move from string to string it’s my wrist that does most of the motion.

But there’s another technique which I might give a try. It’s called the floating thumb technique. The thumb and forearm do not rest on anything, and all the motion between strings is coming from your shoulder. Sounds strange, huh? I know. It sounds a little bit strange to me, too. But below is a more detailed explanation and demonstration by Todd Johnson. He says that it’s a bit difficult to adjust to at first, but once you get the hang of it it’s better for your wrist and supposedly easier to train your hand to play whatever you need to play. It’s also better for playing basses with more than 4 strings.

Back in the mid 90’s, I was really obsessed with Les Claypool, and in particular his tapping technique. He mixes slapping, tapping and strumming, though I never quite got the hang of playing slap (I’m getting somewhat better at it now, but it’s really not how I like to play). So in my mid 90’s band, I did a whole lot of tapping, mostly with sliding chords for a really different kind of bass sound. What worked for me was just figuring out what sounded good, and I highly recommend that approach, though it never hurts to also study what other people can show you. It’s easiest to start with a root, 5th, octave pattern and expand from there, especially if you’re trying to tap and slide chords. I always like playing a 2 note chord with the root and the 5th and then flatten the 5th, sliding up and down in whole steps and occasionally slapping a lower open string if it relates well to the root that I’m playing. If you want a couple of tips just to practice your technique, here’s part one and here’s part two .

Here are a variety of finger warmups, exercises and riffs to experiment with.

Here’s one to get you up to speed skipping a fret across the strings and up and down.

G----------1-3---|-2-4------------|----------3-5---|-4-6------------|

D-------1-3------|----2-4---------|-------3-5------|----4-6---------|

A----1-3---------|-------2-4------|----3-5---------|-------4-6------|

E-1-3------------|----------2-4---|-3-5------------|----------4-6---|

…etc. I haven’t tried tried this one yet, but I could see it being really helpful, especially if you mix it up with different hand positions. Here’s the whole thing , along with a slap warmup.

Here’s another cool one that I’m going to try. It’s like your basic chromatics, but it slides up a fret each time you move over a string.

G|------------------------4-5-6-7----------------------------------|
D|----------------3-4-5-6---------5-6-7-8--------------------------|
A|--------2-3-4-5-------------------------6-7-8-9---------8-9-10-11|
E|1-2-3-4-----------------------------------------7-8-9-10---------|

G|----------10-11-12-13|
D|9-10-11-12-----------|
A|---------------------|
E|---------------------|

There are plenty of other variations on these. I suggest using any combination or version that works for you. While I was rather diligent about doing these kinds of exercises daily, I’ve fallen a bit off the wagon, jumping right into grooves I want to experiment with and skipping my scales all together. While any practice is good practice, regular practice of the basic fundamentals, while not nearly as fun, is really key to being able to play well. I have to remember that and get more disciplined about it.

Another tip I’ve heard is that when you’re playing scales you should call out the note you’re playing, so that while you train your fingers you are also ingraining into your mind the exact note of each fret of each string, which combined with really knowing your scales inside and out will help give you the ability to quickly improvise. I’ve tried it a little bit and it’s harder than it sounds. I rarely have the patience to get about halfway through a major scale with it, and haven’t even attempted it with anything involving sharps and flats. I really wish I did all this stuff back when I was a kid and had time to practice an hour a day.

OK, last time we tackled the major scales, this time we’re doing the minors. The best way to describe a minor key is that it sounds kind of sad. It’s a well known fact that D Minor is the saddest of all keys. So what makes the minor sound so sad? It has a flat third.

So, you remember the major scales we went over last time? Good.We played that one in a pattern that spanned 4 frets. I used G as an example and it started on your root note of G with your middle finger on the third fret of the E string. Your Second is A, pinky on the 5th fret of the E string. Then we’ve got the third which in the major scale is a B with your index on the 2nd fret of the A string, but since we’re playing a minor scale we flatten the 3rd, playing it one half step lower (which means one fret closer to the head). It helps to look at a piano’s keys to really understand half and whole steps, and we’ll do that another time.

So, to play a flat third, you’re going to need to slide your index to the 1st fret of the A string and play a bB. The rest of this scale is the same as the major, though you’ll want to slide your hand back up a fret because your 4th, 5th, 6th and octave are all the same as they were in the major scale.

Another way you can try playing these scales is on 2 strings with more slide. This helps you to go up and down your fretboard and is shown here.

As with any scales, you’re going to want to do these over and over until you can play them in any key in your sleep.

I’m still pretty new to music theory. I know the difference between major and minor scales when I hear them, but I’m still learning what makes them different. We’ll start here with major scales which are your basic scale without anything fancy. All other scales are derived from the major scale. It’s a series of 7 notes and an octave. Let’s use G as an example. You’ll start with your middle finger on the third fret on your E string and that’s your root. The 2nd is A, pinky on 5th fret of your E string. The 3rd is B, index on 2nd fret of A string. The  4th is C, middle on 3rd fret of A string. The 5th is D, pinky on 5th fret of A string (or an open D string, but that won’t help you with proper finger technique). The 6th is E, index on 2nd fret of D string. The 7th is F, middle on 3rd fret of D string. And then the Octave is G, pinky on 5th fret of D string (or an open G, but see above).

Besides just running this pattern back and forth and up and down the fretboard in each and every key, you can learn a few important things. The root note, 5th and Octave make up the power chord. The 5th is always 2 frets down the neck on your next higher (pitched) string, and the Octave is always 2 frets down and two strings higher.

Practice these scales. Next time we tackle the minors.

Pentatonic scales are probably the first scale most bassists learn. This is one you need to know in and out and how to play them in any key. Why? Because they’re freakin’ versatile! You can play them under almost anything, major or minor. Otherwise known as the blues scale, the pentatonic has 5 notes rather than the usual 7 in major and minor scales. And once you learn the patterns, you have all sorts of improvisational options.

Here’s a more in-depth explanation with notation and tabs.

Here’s a video lesson with pro bassist Scott Giambusso.

Remember, the key to learning these scales is repetition. Do it until long after it’s boring. Drill it into your brain so your fingers can do it without even thinking about it. Once you’ve gotten to the point where you can do them forewards and backwards in your sleep, start mixing them up and jumping around with them.