wishface

There are lots of advantages to using rest strokes, well two: tone and muting. The latter is perhaps the most important for me as it allows my r hand to sit on the bass closer to strings so that it can mute more effectively, along with the finger resting on the adjacent string as it plays. However when playing at, or trying to, speed rest strokes are inefficient IMO. They use too much motion and too much of the finger to deal with speed effectively and can create string noise of their own ([url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj5luoLV2J8&feature=related"]listen[/url] to how John Myung plays: his chops may be awesome but to my ears that's an undesirable tone). Though some people like 'arry from Iron Miaden seem to make this work in their favour. So should I concentrate solely on playing with rest strokes and just practice hard to develop speed, or are free strokes really the way to play at speed? But when i use free strokes my hand arches off the bass too much as a means of playing (more like flea, but not restricted to anchoring on the pickup). This isn't uncomfortable at all, it's not a physically stressful thing, but it does compromise RH muting completely. Thanks.

OK thanks.

I have this book, by Josquin Des Pres, but how do you make use of it? It has 200 exercises. You could spend your entire life working through it at the expense of everything else! Id' like to make use of these exercises because my goal right now is to develop my speed and fluidity of plucking, but I don't know where to being or how to proceed. Has anyone else used this book successfully?

sorry, what lick are you referring to?

i play 2 fingers. Not really interested in three finger playing.

does anyone know any good exercises for dealing with string skipping and alternate picking - ie helping with the weaker finger playing octaves and the like. If you take a line such as Friday by Sly and Robbie, which is quite a simple line, because the octave lick falls on my weaker finger I struggle to keep it in time. How to correct this?

anyone that thinks plectrum playing is not cool needs to watch Does Humour Belong in Music? by Frank Zappa. Blacky from Voivod plays some interesting stuff. not to mention the mighty Chris Squire

[quote name='Jellyfish' timestamp='1344154600' post='1760374'] Massive fan of LTE, and on that final run, doesn't he copy Petrucci? In which case, would it be at all possible to just transcribe the part from guitar tab if available? Just an idea. [/quote]Probably but the question is whether that's actually what he is playing.

He is, which is always a treat, but not for the run at the end, which is what i'm referring to.

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFZXfKrFWF0"]From 2008.[/url] No stick here. Can't really tell what he's playing at the end, but he lands on the low g as per the riff.

[quote name='ezbass' timestamp='1344084429' post='1759547'] This seems very likely and he's just Mr Modest. Another reason I like him so much. [/quote]I was rather hoping it wasn't true - not because I want to believe TL sucks (he doesn't), but because I love the idea of great bass players not having to learn to play really fast!

I know he uses the stick a lot with LTE (you can't miss that sound), but I've watched them perform the song on youtube and he uses his fingers for this part. Perhaps TL is just that good (and why shouldn't he be, he's awesome). But the part is so fast I wonder if it's misheard by transcribers. Though tbh parts that are this quick just get lost in the low frequencies really!

good video though

well i have my own practice methodology. I hope it works.

Do you ever feel you are going backwards as you progress? Is that natural?

Hello, I'm trying to learn the end run at the end of this song by the above band. It's not my favourite band in the world, but it has the god that is Tony Levin on bass and I have never heard him play fast runs like this before, so I've given myself the goal of trying to learn it. The only tab I've found is here, but the fingering is very odd which makes me question it's accuracy. He plays it on the 4 string (at least according to youtube!). It's the final 16th note run at the end at some speed. Oddly I've been trying to find footage of Tony playing fast because for some reason I was curious to see just how fast he could play as he's one of my favourite bass players. I'm not much of a tab follower: i always played along with bands/records not to learn the parts but to try and imagine my own by sort of copying what I heard and thinking of what I'd play. That plus I'm lazy. Thanks.

[quote name='Coilte' timestamp='1343376222' post='1749629'] I find the best way to practice arpeggios is to work on their inversions. For example: 1357 - Root Inversion 3571- 1st " 5713- 2nd " 7135 - 3rd " The link below does inversions on a chord progression (Dm7 G7 Cmaj7). [url="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:x5YSj-DaVEsJ:s63821.gridserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/davemarkswalking05.pdf+dave+marks+chord+inversions&hl=en&gl=ie&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgqFNM_AKtAQT0XzGJ3Ig5TMl7opNvXtxV_ZqFcsLjU9H89qD4ilT4b__9X9RBREGXifu8YML3l2QrbJKeVc1jQrJjfQa37HBYqqEx2mZLqhuDH-J6NX_WcnEDicEgehBioHQ85&sig=AHIEtbQPWyLGL5x0VPXg6y6cwNCXaWAo2A"]https://docs.google....g6y6cwNCXaWAo2A[/url] [/quote] Ok, working with this exercise, how do you come back down the strings (something I like to do in my exercises)? For instance: if you ascend: F, A, C, E, A, C, E, F, C, E, F, A, E, F, A, C... do you descend: C, A, F, E, A, F, E, C, F, E, C, A, E, C, A, F? or do you descend: E, F, A, C, C, E, F, A, A, C, E, F, F, A, C, E (if you can follow all that; imagine starting low F on the E string up to the C on the G)

What are the best exercises to practice arpeggios? There are so many combinations and ways to play them. Up till now I just run through the scale from the major up through the modes up the neck by way of triads within (so, go up 1, 3, 5, come down 6, 4, 2, up 3, 5, 7, etc). But this might be too scale based. Thanks.

bass guitar is probably the most difficult instrument to play precisely because it's function is both harmonic melodic and rhythmic. A good bassline is no different to a solo and should stand solo, which is why dub works so well. Not only that but there are as many legitimate and effective (well almost) ways to play as there are players. What works for one player won't work for another due to nothing more than simple physiology. You don't have this issue with a guitar because guitars are smaller and drums require nothing more than you sit down. A lot of what made Jaco able to become so fluid was the nature of his hands, literally.

well to play devil's advocate, i'm not advocating sloppiness per se. But if I'm honest - brutally honest - i'd much rather listen to such players than the clinician types. Maybe some of these are a victim of their own success, like Victor Wooten, but give me Geddy or Bootsy any day instead.

I'm not going to defend what some might consider poor technique. But there is some mileage in the belief that human idiosyncracies are what make musicians unique. Geddy's index finger trilling (listen to Animate, Caravan, or Time and Motion) and you will hear these kinds of idiosyncracies where sometimes a note will be more forcefully played. That's a consequence of how he plays, i don't know whether he works on fixing that and evening out his tone, but it doesn't bother me at all. it's part of the sound. Steve Harris' clanking is much the same.

I've decided to shelve slapping for the moment. It's not a priority. I'm not sure what you mean by running before walking here. I never sought to learn the most complicated slap solo right off the bat, initially I was curious how people did the fast stuff because that's something I could never work out. I can do basic slap and pop and have been able to for a while. But that's as far as it goes. Anyway it can wait; the world has enough typewriter slappity slap players as it is - just type in slap bass on youtube!

How many 'reps' (if that concept applies to musical instruments) are required before upping the tempo? Do you, for instance, play through it once? Keep playing until you play the part at the current tempo perfectly? This may seem even a banal question, but i feel it is important.

[quote name='Commando Jack' timestamp='1343047872' post='1744210'] For a given technique, I found the fastest way to learn is to break it down into its simplest form, and practise slow enough that you can consciously keep an eye on whats going on. So for the alternate picking example, I would spend a little bit of time a day (or per hour) picking some patterns on the right hand with the left hand just muting the strings. That way you're concentrating on the mechanical action. Exercises such as 4 strokes on each string with a pattern E-A-E-D-E-G etc. Btw, practising hours a day will not help you if you are not intensely concentrating - 15 minutes of intense concentration on an exercise or two will do you far more good than an hour's mindless repetition of the same exercise. [/quote] Understood. How then do you work towards increasing tempo and thus dexterity/speed? I have been working under the assumption that you start, each session, at a given tempo (in this case 60bpm) and during the session increase it, slowly (and hopefully) over time increasing that limit. Obviously starting each session at the max speed from before would be unwise so of course each session takes a long time. This may sound a stupid way to practice to some but that is why I am posting! I don't know any other way of doing this (not online either, not on youtube or through google).

[quote name='Coilte' timestamp='1343039914' post='1744025'] I agree 100%. [/quote]it isn't one versus the other. I really had hoped I'd made that clear.