Caz

Hi, I have only been playing bass for a few years and remember wondering the same with skipping a string when raking as it wasn’t that long ago. I was playing pretty much everything using raking from the very beginning - and the advice I got was to still alternate when skipping a string. Also to practice basslines starting with both the index and middle finger, with raking, to get comfortable with doing everything both ways. Sometimes this means really slowing things down and working it up to speed. At some point it just became engrained and I usually don’t need to think about the right hand now unless it’s something particularly tricky. What is Hip by Tower of Power was a really good one to work on this. I Gotcha (Liza Minelli) is an example of a tune I’m having to slow down then work up to speed just now. Caroline

Thanks for your reply, that's really interesting to hear - why are you a lot better with chord progressions than intervals? Do you come to recognise them after learning a lot of music over the years? I would have thought it'd be intervals then chord progressions in terms of levels of difficulty. Just looking to hear from other bassists really, I have come to bass after studying drums and being able to read bass clef already so I have been able to get out gigging from the beginning on bass but I think there are ear-training steps that I need to catch up on that can't be fast-tracked. I'm wondering what the general level of ability is for most bassists. I have been transcribing loads of pop tunes (LOADS! My pop repertoire list is nearly at 300). Cycle of fifths chord progressions tend to be familiar, and of course blues - some things I just recognise the sound of. But I would have thought by now with the pop stuff I'd be able to listen to the radio and name mostly diatonic chord progressions on pop tunes. How/when in your development did this part come? I've been playing bass for 3 years now. I've been avoiding ear training apps in favour of singing intervals/scales over a drone and checking with a tuner - I really like this, it's interactive and more musical than sitting with an app. I'd be willing to give apps a try if it'd help with the chord progressions side of things, or maybe I just need more time with playing and learning lots of music.. not sure! Caroline

I'm curious to hear what level of ear training other bassists are at and find or would find useful for their playing? I'm generally fine with intervals and have spent a fair bit of time working on pitch with singing/hearing intervals. I've spent some time but less time with scales - mostly just over time I've come to recognise the most common diatonic scales, blues and pentatonic scales etc. For chord progressions, I'd like to improve at recognising more chord progressions, especially if a tune starts not on the 1... say it starts on the 4 chord instead of the 1 chord... I'd like to be able to hear 'this is a IVmaj7, VIm7, Imaj7, V7 chord progression' without too much working it out on the instrument... is this something most others out here can do? What's the general level for players here and how does it help you with your playing? Thanks and hope you're all having a nice day. Caroline

Hi Steve - yes good point, thanks. I had that at first, then wondered because it's E minor is flatting an already flat note in the scale just double flatting so decided on VImaj7 and VII9, then saw in the Berklee course they go for bVImaj7 and bVII9. By the time I did the Luther chart a few days later, which is basically the exact same chords in a different order, I had corrected the terminology - well spotted! I can update the chart for Crazy if anyone would find it helpful. Ah yes this makes sense - I'll have a play over it to check the F Lydian scale works here. Thanks. There's only a tiny bit (3 words!) in the Berklee book about borrowing in this way from parallel Phrygian, and it seems to be only the bIImaj7 that commonly gets borrowed from that? But it makes good sense in the context where you'd see a bIImaj7#11 chord as a chromatic passing chord down to the Imaj7 - so I could potentially write that as Fmaj7#11 to highlight that if I hear the B natural played there on the track. I haven't listened to Maxwell's Silver Hammer yet, but that chart makes total sense with the secondary dominants. I've done a few jazz harmony courses, with not much at all on the pop side and not much gigging on bass until recently (usually a drummer). I'm more comfortable with thinking of things that work with the cycle of fifths, modulating 2 5 1s and secondary dominants etc. Now that I'm studying lots of pop music harmony it's kicking up things that I haven't knowingly come across before. All The Things You Are was mentioned above - I don't find that too difficult to follow, however, wow After The Love Has Gone has got a lot going on, I started playing through and analysing that yesterday... good shout!

Don't think I know this... tough tune? Will have a listen. Here's another example of modal interchange, borrowing from the parallel major. This one's more clearly in the minor key than American Boy or Luther, it just tonicizes the parallel major key in the post-chorus and borrows from it (the G chords) at the end of each section.

The sound that creates on American Boy reminded me of the theme tune from Luther so checked it out and that's an other example of the parallel major getting used on the first chord.. it's in C minor with first chord C

Ha.. sorry I'm still going on about American Boy. How lame! Here's a snippet from a Berklee harmony book which I think summarises what's going on pretty well. The term is modal interchange, we're in Eminor but replacing the Im7 chord at the beginning of the section with the parallel tonic from Emajor. The book says: "Replacing the I chord with a parallel tonic, especially at the beginning or end of a section, is particularly powerful and tends to tonicize the parallel key rather than simply color the primary key".

Finally got around to making a chart for American Boy. Still think it's interesting the E maj / E minor thing, have written it in E minor with a bit of harmonic analysis underneath the stave.

Hey folks, just wanted to show some support for this project and spread the word if anyone's not already aware. Yolanda's an incredible bassist and has stepped back for a bit from touring and is working on an originals project - please check it out and if you like what you hear show some support with the crowdfunder. Laurie Lowe is one of my favourite drummers around, and Roberto Manzin is a monster sax player who I'm glad to see is back in the UK. The whole band are sounding great and have some gigs coming up at Ronnie's. "Yolanda Christina Charles MBE is a British musician and teacher. She has played bass guitar with Paul Weller, David A. Stewart, Robbie Williams, Mick Jagger, The Waterboys, Hans Zimmer and from July 2017 through early 2020 she was a member of Squeeze." Crowdfunder - https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/yolanda-charles-project-ph-debut-album?fbclid=IwAR2nB8a3w-7fR8lRLohRlx-T-Bblyw078TgrLml2XWI-czjxRJf5zh-hXy0 And some links to check out below. Cheers, Caroline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCZxJeCTw14

Yep! Women become experts in shrugging off crap jokes and stupid comments pretty quickly. If you really want to talk about 'toxic masculinity' focus on the important things. I've been a working musician in London for 14 years now and it definitely feels less safe now than when I arrived. For one example, rape prosecution rates have fallen over the last decade to 1.6% - read this article "We are facing the 'decriminalisation of rape', warns victims' commissioner" https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jul/14/we-are-facing-the-decriminalisation-of-warns-victims-commissioner There are serious topics to be upset about. Toxic masculinity doesn't just affect women, and certainly shouldn't be reduced to a conversation about crap jokes. I do like seeing it get called out though, to me it's a sign of professionalism - and I appreciate many of the comments here. I work with a lot of young women and girls who struggle with confidence even though they are often very talented musicians - there's a lot of work to be done to create a culture where they feel welcome. I always call out any racism / homophobia etc when working even if it is disguised as 'banter', you never know who in the room is quietly really appreciating you standing up for them. Thankfully, it tends to be quite rare in professional music environments these days, you'd get called out on it pretty quickly. Caroline

I'm not really good enough on bass to give advice from a bass technical point of view.. it's a second instrument. Musically, Charlie Parker's phrasing is where most of the beauty is, I'd recommend slowing it down until you can really get into his feel and duplicate it when playing along then gradually speed it up, even going a bit past the original tempo. You could forget the bass at first and just sing along, or even tap the rhythm, before taking it to the bass. A lot of blues and history has gone into what he's playing so don't worry if it doesn't fit into a binary definition of straight vs swung.. forget about all that, just keep listening to get 100% into what he's playing, that's all it is.. absorbing, internalising and replicating. Software like Amazing Slow Downer lets you loop sections and slow them down, even a couple of bars at a time, then work up the tempo. If you work on smaller chunks and really internalise how he's playing, like a couple of bars at a time, it'll pay off when you join it all together. Just bear in mind if you're doing this and slow it down a lot, there tend to be 'gears' of swung 8ths feel... so slowing down recordings with uptempo swung 8ths will very likely have a different feel to how it'd actually be played if it was a tune at that slower tempo. And give yourself enough time, Dave Liebman recommends around 50 hours per transcription, being able to sing it perfectly alongside the recording then play it. Good luck Caroline

Hi everyone, I'm doing a project on vocalising rhythms as a way to improve time feel. For example, Konnakol in South Indian Carnatic music. I'm looking for ways to apply vocal systems like this to western music - jazz, pop etc, to improve time feel and strengthen rhythmic facility. Part of the project is a series of lessons with Ari Hoenig and Dan Weiss, who have both partly worked on rhythm by vocalising away from the drums. I'm interested to hear from the general community, what things have worked well for you to improve on rhythm and time? If working with a metronome, did you find specific ways to use it to strengthen your time feel when there's no metronome? And is there any vocalising involved when you practice with your instrument? Keen to hear about everything from singing, clapping, dancing etc.. anything that you feel has led to improvements. Thanks, Caroline

Turns out my 5 string bass is quite heavy for doing multiple 1 hour sets! Am looking for strap options for ways to efficiently balance the weight, have seen some harnesses online.. tempting if they work, they look a bit naff though! Has anyone found any good solutions please? Caroline

Electric sound. I'm new to bass but studied jazz drums so have a bit of a head start. I think beat placement is important but also getting a good sound. Been trying to get a nice swingy sound with thinking about how to play the notes, note length, tone etc but it's not there yet. Cheers, Caroline

I got Ed Friedland's Walking Bass Lines book and found that really fantastic to get started, so would recommend any similar topics covered in that book for beginners Greg. I've been playing bass for just over 2 years now, and the concepts covered in the book gave enough of an outline which allowed me to start doing the odd jazz gig on electric bass, and playing with a jazz orchestra weekly. I plan to just stick to working on those walking fundamentals for quite a while, then maybe get into transcribing a bit more in future to work out some better ways of playing things. For now, that method is plenty to be working with, and I'm not too fussed about soloing just yet - I'll get to that later, and don't mind blagging solos with barely any vocabulary for now. Sound is also something I need to work on, that's a bit of a hurdle and might be good to talk about. Thanks, Caroline

I've only been playing bass for less than 2 years, and could read music from playing piano and timpani (which is also bass clef). So from the beginning on bass I've been reading and writing music in the form of chord charts or fully written transcriptions. I think that has helped speed up the learning process a lot as a beginner, as knowing what the notes should be gives more freedom to work on the playing side of things. There are a couple of limitations so far - my memory for pop music needs work so I try to not read in this context, to get the ear/memory side of my brain working.. this is definitely lagging behind my ability to just read through a tune. I joined a big band taking over from a bassist who did the gig for over 20 years but would only read notation, so he has written in notation over chords and improvised sections, and in charts written for the band there are often no chords because he preferred only the dots. Which has been a roast! Ideally I wouldn't want to become reliant on reading to that extent, it'd be good in the long term to be able to read notation when it's there, walk or improvise over chords when those are there, and in other styles of music just work on playing from ear and memory.. there's room for everything. Caroline

Ha yeah I'm mainly a drummer, busted.. anyone want to jam?? Totally understand about the lockdown bass thing.. I grew up playing drums with people, so not being able to gig and play with people over this last year has been a bit dry, whereas I'm having a lot of fun learning bass and playing along with records. Caroline

Reggaebass this has been my biggest music theory struggle with reggae so far, at 1.15 in Is This Love on 'I wanna KNOW' Aston Barrett plays a minor 7th bass note over the major 7th melody.. and keeps doing it!! It sounds a bit weird but he somehow totally pulls it off... swag!

Thanks for the straight wrist advice. Been trying it out a bit today, can see the benefits from a physical point of view, probably isn't good to have the wrist bent all the time. It changes the angle I pluck the strings at a bit, like was mentioned.. I'll look into this a bit more

cheers 😀

Nice SaimoN. I noticed your right wrist is quite straight when you play, is that intentional? Just curious if there's a technical reason to keep the wrist straight instead of curved over the bass. I've been practicing walking bass lines from Ed Friedland's book and uploaded this to instagram today - playing along with Impressions by John Coltrane. Full disclosure, I slowed the track down as haven't got it up to tempo yet! https://www.instagram.com/p/CNctxdHl6a-/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link Caroline

I'm trying to analyse 'exceptions' a bit more, like if there are chords that don't fit in the key I'm trying to not just skim over but see if I can explain them as secondary dominants, modal interchange etc. Also working on hearing secondary dominants better within the original key. Am hoping that by doing this I'll start to join some dots.. being interested in it is making me study more tunes, so I wouldn't say it's holding me back. Caroline

Nice to hear these side by side Obra - they both sound nice, the green one sounds a touch brighter to me. I did a cover of Maroon 5's This Love this morning, it's the first one on my new 5 string and it goes right down to the low B. I'm on the lookout for some other tunes that make use of the lower 5th string so please let me know if you have any good suggestions. It's on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMChS1EFLH6/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link Caroline

Here it is. Put lighter strings on it and got help yesterday to set it up to make it easier to play, as the action was really high. There are two battery compartments to use it as an active bass, I'll pick up some batteries today for this. I'm happy to see it also works in passive mode. Sounds good so far, still figuring out what all the knobs do. It came with a gig bag but no instruction manual, and the ones on the Fender website look like older models, so am a bit unsure about some of the basics. Playing-wise, it's very nice although I think it'll take me a while to get used to having the 5th string there as even the most basics tunes are taking some thought, but I'm enjoying playing it so far. Thanks again for all the help. One option which might be nice to try in future, if I've joined a cover band and have more of an idea of requirements, could be putting a higher string on it instead EADGC and using a drop D-tuner.

Thank you all for your helpful input. I've taken these comments on board and have been considering the various options - and I'm not quite sure how this has happened but I've just found myself ordering a 5-string fender deluxe active jazz bass with next day delivery from GAK 😃 have to say, it looks very cool!