ZMech

An exercise my mate showed me when I started, which I find useful was to play the classic 50's walking bassline, making sure to play one finger per fret style. If you start highish up the neck, the stretch shouldn't be a problem, and you can gradually move further up as your fingers get used to stretching. In tab, it would be as follows if played in C: -------------------------------------------------------------7-8-7------ ------------7-8-7-------------------7-8-7----------7-10-------7-10- -------7-10--------10-7----7-10---------10-7-8-------------------- ----8----------------------8-------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------7---------------------------------------- --------------7-8-7--------------9---9-----7-10-7----------7-8-7------- -------7-10---------10-7---10---------8--------------7-10-------10-7-- ----8--------------------------------------------------8---------------------- You should be using index finger on the 7th fret, middle on 8th, ring on 9th and pinky on the 10th when playing this. I still find this tiring to play in G. Try youtubing a few videos, see if any of them make sense. Also, your left hand should resemble the picture below, with your thumb on the back of the neck, not round the side, else you won't be able to spread your fingers in the slightest (it's comfy, but unhelpful). One last thing, experiment with how softly you actually [u]need[/u] to fret to ring a clear note without buzzing, it's hardly any force at all.

Some great tracks up here. For a first outing on thursday my singer and I are gonna keep things classic, playing Cry Me a River, followed by Summertime. Since she's a nice blonde, I came up with the name for our duo of Beauty and the Bassist. Shall let you guys know how it goes.

I just don't get why you wouldn't use two 2x10's. Especially since we (meaning alex clabber) have already established that they sound better vertically stacked than horizontally.

Where abouts do you live? If you're close to london, head down to the bass gallery in camden (my favourite shop in the world). If you tell them your situation, they should be happy to give you a few models to try. Although I'd add the warning that it's not the cheapest place to get a bass, and you'd likely get better value secondhand. Speaking of which, I'll happily sell [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/36087-fs-warwick-rockbass-streamer-std/page__fromsearch__1"]my starter bass[/url].

Bought my spector rebop to move on from my entry level rockbass having played for a year back in 2007. Still completely happy with it, haven't felt the need to consider buying a new bass (other than the DB, but that's a different matter).

Think I prefer the finish my mate just gave his stagg:

Yeah I felt the same way, but started going along to a jazz/funk jam night at uni anyway a couple of years ago. Well now I'm running it, and it has massively improved my playing, I can now walk a chord change like a great big walking thing. Has also had the strange side effect of giving me an appreciation for jazz, probably as we were playing fun stuff, not the smooth jazz nonsense my dad's always listening to. If you can find a similar local jam, I'd suggest that as your next step. On a side note, I still veto Girl From Ipanema, I don't care who says it's a classic, to me it sounds like the quintessential backround lift music.

Jazz?

Haven't listened to it yet, but I know Charles Mingus played enough piano to learn jazz that he got pretty good, and realesed an album called Mingus Plays Piano. I've been meaning to start mucking about on piano, but every time I have 20 minutes spare I practise bass instead, so it's just not happening. here's one from youtube: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHY2AMNnrFQ"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHY2AMNnrFQ[/url]

[quote name='hillbilly deluxe' timestamp='1319276925' post='1412079']there are loads,ie,cream,free, [/quote] for a moment i misread that and wondered why i'd never heard of the band ice cream.

Hope you've got on well will the drones, decided I'm gonna be spending a lot of my weekend with my Rufus Reid book. [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/158437-how-to-practise-timing-and-rhythm/"]Thought that this thread I started on how to practise timing[/url] might interest you. I always find it funny how topics about pickups get lots more attention than those about practising.

[quote name='woodster' timestamp='1319270658' post='1411980'] I use this exercise from Adam Nitti in my lessons. I just use a bassline appropriate to the student's ability. [/quote] That's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for, cheers. Will spend a while doing that later, shall see how good my timing really is [quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1319273472' post='1412026'] That Nitti video is excellent. I feel a metronome session coming on ... On a related subject, what do you do when the drummer's internal sense of time differs from your own? Sometimes I try to hold my own tempo to encourage him to come back to "the right one", sometimes I think that maybe he knows best and I follow him. Neither is particularly satisfactory. [/quote] I've had a similar problem before. At a jam night, one drummer always got overenthusiastic with his fills, and would slip out of time. I decided it was best to just soldier on with my own tempo, and he always joined back in. If it was someone changing tempo through the song I'd probably just give them evil looks.

Cheers bubinga, but with the good drummer advise, I was thinking that listening to a Ray Brown lesson, he can keep a super solid rhythm going just by himself. My teacher gave me the exercise to put the metronome down to about 40bpm, and walk a song i know (I picked blue monk) over that tempo, turned out to be really hard to get each note bang on! Was more suggestions like these that I'm looking for.

Am gonna ask some drummer friends the same question, but does anyone have any good exercises for practising timing and rhythm? I like to think I have an already good ability, but as with everything I'd still like to be able to make my timing top notch through practise, so does anyone have suggestions of exercises to help with this?

Analyse the hell out of every rock trio you can think of, Cream are the first ones that jump to mind for me.

Seems my stamina has progressed nicely. Had a jam with a couple of mates the day , and other than a bit of left hand discomfort about 10 mins in, I happily mucked around for 2hrs. It was just us playing around with a few song ideas, not a gig or anything, so wasn't overly strenuous stuff, but my hands were spurisingly happy by the end of it. Seems the regular 30mins/day practise over the summer has payed off.

Various mates have started using the verb 'jam' to mean generally hanging out. This got very confusing when one of them is someone I do occasional muck around with musically, so I had to check what he meant.

If you're near north london I never touch my starter bass anymore, a warwick rockbass streamer standrd (translucent red). pm me if you're interested.

Firstly, get yourself a teacher. I use mine more as an accompaniment to my teacher, where we occasionally discuss how best to use the exercises. Firstly tone is everything, so I went back yesterday and repeated the open string exercises w/ a slow (50bpm) metronome, just to try and put into practise the right hand technique discussion I'd had with my teacher. Secondly, with scales, get yourself some nice drones to play over. There's a thread somewhere in here with all 12 notes as 3min organ drones. They're extremely helpful when practising scales, as otherwise it's extremely hard to keep the reference note in your head, so having a drone in the backround will improve your intonation, and your interval knowledge. So each day I'll do something technique based like this until I get bored, or for 10 minutes, whichever comes first. Then comes the more fun part of learning some songs, I was given the exercise last lesson to take a standard I know (went with blue monk), and try and walk it over a super slow (about 30bpm) tempo, putting each note dead in time with the metronome. Turned out to be extremely hard, was quite an eye opener since I considered myself to have pretty good rhythm.

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1318100414' post='1398153']And is this at least part of the reason why some bands can now sound a little anodyne, clinical, bland, boring, unexciting, uninspiring, uninteresting and/or mind-bogglingly dull? [/quote] Pretty sure I watched a programme about The Eagles, in which the other California bands complained they were too clinical. Are all those adjective you listed really a new occurrence?

I love playing bass guitar with a great drummer as mentioned, don't get much kicks from playing it by myself. double bass on the other hand I can happily spend an hour just playing in my room, and absolutely love. Feels like double bass is now just the right instrument for me.

Did you try the phone number as well, or just not get a reply to the email and give up?

Just got home from 2 weeks away from my bass. Feels like the finger strength has faded massively, seriously not cool...

I get the same noise if my phone's in my right pocket i.e. next to the electronics, but it stops when I switch it to the other. a 5m radius sounds ridiculous though, isn't it this kind of thing that the shielding is meant to prevent?

Find a DB lutheir, get them to take a look at it. Alternatively, if you've got a teacher they should be able to tell you. Things that can't be checked from a photo include the action, and sound post positioning. If these need adjusting, as well as the fingerboard sorting, you could be looking at a bit over £100, but it'll make the world of difference (it to to mine at least).