Jam Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 So I've been trying to play this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Hlhi8AZf6k for ages and ages, but I've never found tab that sounds right for the last chorus. I bought Standing in the Shadows of Motown about a year ago, looked at it and shelved it for "later". I just dusted it off, spent a couple of hours going through what amounts to about 18 bars, and I think I've finally got it! With a little determination I've started to crack the bass clef and reading, etc, it's nowhere near as daunting as I thought it was going to be. I found writing out the score on paper and telling myself what notes they were really helped. Does anyone have any tips or good resources for starting to read which will make things easier? I have a cool app on my iphone called "Bass" with a couple of quavers behind it, and if you press the line on the stave it tells you what the note is and where to find it. That's put me in a really good mood! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pietruszka Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 I found that learning to read isn't hard, but getting good at it just takes practice, and plenty of it. I struggle with rhythm and thats the bit that gets me. I recently bought a book which I recommend, it's called "Improve your sight-reading!" and I've found it really useful. It's a work book for examinations and has rhythm exercises, introduces you to keys which as you work through the book feels really natural. It is for trombone, but! It's in bass clef which I feel is important, I don't know why there isn't much for bass guitar which doesn't have tab. Honestly, if you're a good enough player to play Jaco stuff you shouldn't need tab, it tells you nothing about the piece! Sounds like you're making progress though, and it's always satisfying when you learn a piece from dots. Master Blaster is a nice one to read! Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingrayPete1977 Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 Get the Frodis bass clef app, it's really good! Check out the bass clef yts thread on here that crops up from time to time, it has some good links and advice, bass clef wizard game is fun but be warned its addictive!!!!! I'm a great wizard myself under 1 second per clip average, took me f***ing ages Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iiipopes Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 (edited) I come from a classical music background. I started with piano lessons when I was eight years old in April, 1970 for a few years. Believe it or not, learning some rudimentary piano can help a player learn bass. That's how I learned. After a few years of piano lessons as a boy, I showed up at a summer band camp and offered to play electric bass for the jazz band section of the camp for what we call the "middle" years or "junior high" years in USA schools (13-14 years old). They passed out the charts. Literally, the first note was a 4th line f, so I went in my mind, "Open D, Eb, E, F - third fret"; second note was a 4th space G, so, in my mind, "open string G"; third note was top line A, so it was, "Open G, Ab, A - second fret"; etc., note by note throughout the piece, and I built on that throughout the week of camp. This was on Monday morning. That Friday evening I anchored the band with a half-hour concert for all the parents & friends, before the concert band section of the band camp gave their concert. I've never looked back. I am now a #1 call guy where I live when a bass player in another band goes down, because I can sight read the gig on either electric or double bass, whether on written out charts, chord charts, head charts, chord symbols with lyrics, etc. Yes, by all means, learn to read. You will get more offers for gigs than you can handle. In the past week, I have accepted for over the next month four or five gigs and turned down two or three because of conflicting timing. Edited August 31, 2012 by iiipopes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingrayPete1977 Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 Here is the game, I just got 1.18 'bass clef wizard' on my first go in ages but I have been doing a bit of reading fairly recently [url="http://www.studybass.com/tools/bass-clef-notes/"]http://www.studybass.com/tools/bass-clef-notes/[/url] I do have photo evidence of a 1.0 dead 'great wizard' though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jam Posted August 31, 2012 Author Share Posted August 31, 2012 Awesome, cheers guys. I've always put off reading as I hated it as a child learning violin (that didn't last long!). I also play shakuhachi, japanese bamboo flute, and I started learning with traditional notation (which is a hell of a lot more complex), I really wish I'd done that with bass from the start. Just found this, pretty handy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07wC50bWbnY&feature=youtube_gdata_player Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingrayPete1977 Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 Them Jamerson lines are tough, thats before you worry about feel and dynamics etc! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bagsieblue Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 Reading Bass Clef is really all about practicing it regularly. I'm now trying to avoid TAB like the plague - I think like a lot of 'shortcuts' it actually works out to be a longer way around. I use the first 20 to 30 min of my practice sessions as a warm up by reading and playing Bass Clef - I find it warms up both the eyes for reading and also the hands. Try to find bass clef only with no TAB - I've even cut strips of card of varying sizes to cover the TAB on TAB transcriptions that I have! The Major's Bootcamp in the Theory section is a great resource to work through. I feel I've made good progress on reading the dots but like pietruska I also struggle with reading rhythmns - I'd be interested to hear people's techniques to learn these better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doddy Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 [quote name='bagsieblue' timestamp='1346443347' post='1789415'] I feel I've made good progress on reading the dots but like pietruska I also struggle with reading rhythmns - I'd be interested to hear people's techniques to learn these better. [/quote] Reading rhythms,I think,is the hardest part.There is a lot more possibilities than there are actual notes. The best way I've found for rhythm reading is,simply,to count.Basically,as you probably know,it goes... Semibreve- 1(2,3,4) Minim - 1(2)3(4) Crotchet - 1,2,3,4 Quaver - 1&,2&,3&,4& Semiquaver-1e&a,2e&a,3e&a,4e&a (Obviously there are more,like triplets,but they are for later.) If you understand that,it then just comes down to different combinations.Take it steady and count without a metronome-it's more about the counting than being in strict time. Eventually you'll begin to recognise patterns and you won't have to count them,because you will know how they go. Check out a book like 'Modern Reading Text in 4/4' for some rhythm reading exercises.It's a drum book so it's purely rhythmic,but it's got some great exercises and it gets pretty tough as it goes on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bagsieblue Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 Thanks Doddy - agreed the Rhythms are harder than the actual notes - the parts I find particularly troublesome are the more complex pieces (obviously) where there is a need to change, repeatedly, from one rhythm to another. I think I've got 'Modern Reading Text in 4/4' somewhere, so will work through that as well Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingrayPete1977 Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 That book helped me a lot, I got it after you suggested it in another thread. Got a bit tired of playing E though I'm getting there slowly, in the same way the notes mostly come without thinking now I have had a few little auto pilot moments where the rhythms just went to plan without thinking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingrayPete1977 Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 I am reading brown eyed girl at the moment, it's got some trickier bits and it's taking me a while but it's fun. The riff comes in on the and of 3, I have started to read across the bars and just play the notes at the rhythms I see , did I see you say that was ok somewhere before Doddy, more akin to just sight reading the notes? Ta Funny thing is I can already play it well enough for a dep wedding gig in a couple of weeks time, it's purely for my sadistic pleasure! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pietruszka Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 [quote name='Doddy' timestamp='1346444294' post='1789430'] Reading rhythms,I think,is the hardest part.There is a lot more possibilities than there are actual notes. The best way I've found for rhythm reading is,simply,to count.Basically,as you probably know,it goes... Semibreve- 1(2,3,4) Minim - 1(2)3(4) Crotchet - 1,2,3,4 Quaver - 1&,2&,3&,4& Semiquaver-1e&a,2e&a,3e&a,4e&a (Obviously there are more,like triplets,but they are for later.) If you understand that,it then just comes down to different combinations.Take it steady and count without a metronome-it's more about the counting than being in strict time. Eventually you'll begin to recognise patterns and you won't have to count them,because you will know how they go. Check out a book like 'Modern Reading Text in 4/4' for some rhythm reading exercises.It's a drum book so it's purely rhythmic,but it's got some great exercises and it gets pretty tough as it goes on. [/quote] I've been doing that quite a bit lately, either counting through and vocally accenting the notes with the part of the bar that they fall on, or clapping one hand on my leg in 4 and the other hand claps the rhthym on the other leg. Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ML94 Posted September 1, 2012 Share Posted September 1, 2012 Theres a good book which I've been using for a couple of weeks. Its called Reading Rhythm for Electric Bass. It has many different variations and progressively gets harder as you' think. Also if your unsure about a rhythm and no ones about to show you, there's an app called 'Notion' it's really for those who want to compose and what not but it's great because you can type in any rhythm using the handy bars on the top. A great buy ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jam Posted September 1, 2012 Author Share Posted September 1, 2012 [quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1346428192' post='1789168'] Get the Frodis bass clef app, it's really good! Check out the bass clef yts thread on here that crops up from time to time, it has some good links and advice, bass clef wizard game is fun but be warned its addictive!!!!! I'm a great wizard myself under 1 second per clip average, took me f***ing ages [/quote] Just wanted to say good call on the Frodis app man, it's very good! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingrayPete1977 Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 It's very good, I should play on it more often. I'm pretty good at note recognition now so tend to do the one where you play the correct note from the staff in the corner, my fret knowledge could be better even after all these years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.gif.9ad672bb8b84505709f76b39c8c256ec.gif)
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.