Bass Lessons are available in all kinds of formats these days audio, video, book and even on-line. No matter what type of media you choose to start your journey to learning how to play bass you must always concentrate on the fundamentals no matter what your skill level.

Even a professional like Tiger Woods has a teacher or a coach that makes sure he never looses site of the foundations that built his golf game to what it is today. This article will touch on three things that a bass player playing the bass must always lock in to memory and never forget: Hand Positioning, Wrist Movement, and Thumb Attack.

Take a regular guitar (which is tuned from the thickest to the lowest string- E – A – D – G – B – E) and exclude the two thinnest strings at the bottom and what is left is basically a bass guitar with thinner strings. Bass playing is usually note-oriented and not chord-oriented. This means that single notes are hit more often in bass playing and this scheme is the essential element of bass playing, one should be familiar with the tunings and the notes in a regular guitar to be able to decently play the bass guitar.

In struggling simply to get out the notes, though, it’s easy to neglect developing the hand’s small muscles. The result can be a great deal of wasted energy and motion, limiting one’s technique. So here’s a few suggestions about the slap technique:

It combines the plucking of the bottom notes with the percussive hits that the palm makes when it slaps the strings against the fingerboard. Slap bass is a very percussive style. It’s invention (on electric bass) has been credited to Larry Graham, of funk bands Sly& the Family Stone and Graham Central Station, allegedly improvising on an occasion when their band was left without a drummer! Slap bass is a must for the musicians who use spectacular and popular funk slap techniques which demands specific snappy attacks.

Attacking The Strings: The most important part to remember while starting to take slap bass lessons is the amount of intensity used to attack the strings. Now that you know the proper hand positioning and wrist movement you must know how to attack the strings with your thumb. With your thumb in position as described under the Hand Positioning section strike the low E string with the middle knuckle of your thumb and hit it pretty hard to get that classic “thump’ sound and then immediately release.

Play the scale four times completely through using sixteenth notes. This means that you must play 4 notes for each metronome beat. Again, if 60 bpm is too fast, slow it down to a tempo at which you can play the exercise perfectly. We play this exercise four time through , not only to increase your speed, but also to build your endurance–your ability to play faster for longer periods of time.

Once that you feel comfortable with the scales, it’ll be time to move to other techniques to increase your skills and vocabulary. But scales should never be overlooked, they build your playing and playing them on your bass also serves you as an ear training exercise.

If you’ve enjoyed all the exciting information you read here about bass guitar lessons,you’ll love everything else you find at learn how to play bass guitar

Related Content

Subscribe to the post comments feeds or Leave a trackback