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I got 2 weeks to learn 7 finger-burning songs on bass. Any ideas on
what should my strategy be?
Tough challenge based on how you're framing it up: Their songs are way more complex than pretty much everything I've played before.. I got 2 weeks to learn 7 finger-burning songs on bass.
First thing to do, if you are comfortable doing so, is to talk to your ...
19
It's the same as on a guitar. Harmonics occur at equal divisions of the string length. Half the string is the location of the 12th fret. This produces a harmonic at twice the frequency of the open string, which is one octave higher.
Dividing the string into thirds, which is at the 7th fret, produces the fifth of the 12th fret harmonic. (Halfway between the ...
17
They're a staple of rock, and as bass guitar is often used as a rock instrument, they are seen as one of the basic techniques of bass playing. With many rock rhythms, quarter notes are too slow and make the song feel lethargic, while 16ths are too frantic and hard to play. 8th notes are, for many songs, just the right thing to drive things forward with the ...
17
I'm going to assume the usual way I get given new material to learn, as I don't read... so I get some recordings & have to figure it out from that.
Edit
This method is definitely intended to leave you a lot of mental space, never get bogged down in a difficult bit, move on to something else & come back later if you struggle.
At any point in the ...
15
What you seek, my friend, is "the groove". As you're discovering, there's more to it than the mechanical (or even mathematical) approach of playing certain notes with a triplet rhythm. While your approach is technically correct, I'm guessing it lacks the feeling you're looking for. That's what's known as "groove" or being "in the pocket" or (especially ...
15
There are many different ways to approach playing bass and depending on what style you are trying to go for it may be all you need to fill the sound. I'll explain a few simple styles and techniques that can spice up a bass line.
Octaves
Rather simple, but effective. Your still playing only the root note, but changing the octave is a very simple and ...
14
It's a simile. There are a few different types of similes and this one means "play the last notated measure again". So in this piece you will end up playing the measure before the simile marks 3 times, then play the next notated measure.
It's pretty much a very shorthand way of saying "Play what you just played again".
13
The technical term is glissando or gliss slide. Whether you're going up or down or both, basically it's a long slide.
13
Where my confusion really comes in is that if the song is in the key
of G does that mean I'm only allowed to play the notes in that scale
(G,A,B,C,D,E, F#)?
The key of a song does not determine which notes you use for the bass-line on a particular chord - the key represents the overall sonority of a song, not all the chords, or the notes they comprise. ...
12
My advice is to learn the bass parts of songs for which you wish you had created that bass part instead of the player who actually did. For example, I spent a good part of my late teens pretty much learning every bass part on Blood Sugar Sex Magik, because I thought everything Flea played was awesome. After that, it was onto Sly & The Family Stone ...
12
If you are planning to be a really good player, you should be able to start on either finger. This depending on which string you are starting on and which string the next note is on as well as which brain cell you are using. That last part is a joke however you won't want to make conscious decisions about which finger you start with. This will all be ...
12
In general, it's fairly common for a bass set up with a reasonably low action to have a few rattles and buzzes here and there and not something to worry about.
However, if it's bothering you at all, its worth seeing if it can be solved without compromising on other aspects of the instrument's playability. If the rattle is coming from the string hitting the ...
11
Be very, very careful. You're worrying about the string snapping. You should also be worrying about damaging the neck of your instrument.
A bass string will go very tight without snapping. If it does snap, you risk injury. I've had a nasty cut just from a guitar string! If the instrument breaks, you also risk injury -- and you've broken your instrument.
...
11
CADG is the most common way I've heard this term used for basses. It could also refer to the drop D tuning with a low C on the bottom according to Wikipedia, in guitar context: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_c_tuning
Incidentally orchestral basses fitted with a low C extention have the CADG tuning too, although with the extension no fingering changes are ...
11
Welcome to the wonderful world of non-standard intonation. You will like it here.
I have answered here on instruments where you have to dictate the intonation: slide and steel guitar and theremin. I haven't mentioned violin/fiddle, because by the time you're good enough for it to be worthwhile to ask questions in this sort of forum, you've already learned ...
11
With bass guitar, you can often have a lot of success skipping the amp altogether and running the bass through a DI box directly into the mixing board. Or you can take a hybrid approach, where you record the direct signal from the DI box and the signal from a mic'd amp into separate tracks, and then mix the two together.
The general idea here is that the DI ...
11
The basic problem with a bass guitar in a guitar amp is that speaker and cabinet are not built for the low frequencies of the bass guitar.
That means that at the low notes, the speaker will convert 99% of the electrical energy put into it into heat rather than 95% (numbers pulled completely out of the hat, but speaker efficiencies are indeed rather low). ...
10
This is not a common thing. Members of the TalkBass forum discuss it as a novelty.
It appears to be a variant of the "Funk Fingers", which is a pair of short drumsticks attached to the first two fingers. It was invented by Tony Levin, while working with Peter Gabriel, as a way to get funky percussive sounds out of a bass.
...
10
Any answer to this must be opinionated, can't help that. Whilst there are many good basses out there, $500 for your first is more than enough.There is no need to spend that sort of money.I've said it loads of times, but why buy new ? My first bass cost me £15. O.k., I had to mend its broken neck, but it kept me going for the first 8 or 9 years.
I recommend ...
10
You can't go wrong practicing scales, so I'd definitely start there. But for string skipping and thumb muting, here's an exercise I like, called "the spider". You can do this anywhere on the neck that's comfortable, but I'm illustrating it on frets 1-4 for clarity (can we write tab here for non-six-string stringed instruments?):
$A 1 $D 3 $A 2 $D 4 $A 3 $D ...
10
+ Pick
Perhaps the most relevant advantage of a pick is that you can do palm mute, which is pretty useful on bass (in fact rather more useful than on guitar).
IMO that's about it, though! As far as the string-plucking itself is concerned, a pick has no real advantage over good finger technique. Some points that pick-proponents tend to make include
"It's ...
10
I have had to do this with 3 of my guitars, and by far my best results have been from filling the hole with wood glue and then pushing 3 matchsticks in. Once the glue dries, I use a new screw - same width as the old one, but longer.
Super glue really doesn't work on wood - you need wood glue, or wood filler.
10
It can be done with either the fretting hand or the picking hand and there are several methods that can be used such as:
The fretting hand can lift up slightly to mute a note that was just being fretted. Letting the pressure up and resting the finger on the string will stop it from vibrating.
The fretting hand can mute adjacent strings that is not being ...
10
They're not normal. Normal is each of the two screws is level, for each string, so the string sits happily centrally on its saddle. there's far more chance of the lower screw dropping, than the higher one screwing upwards.
Use of a small Allen wrench will solve the problem, and while you're at it, maybe the strings in question could end up lower than they ...
10
There's no better approach than learning the bass parts and guitar parts from your favourite songs and trying to play them. Try by ear but also get through all available transcriptions and tutorials for the songs and strive for being as close to the original as you can. Then record yourself from time to time to watch the progress.
At this stage you will ...
10
Whilst jdjazz's explanation is way more technically plausible - and correct - assuming the bass is playing roots on each chord (`a not unusual situation); it is based on the circle of fourths, can I offer another solution?
There is a set of notes used in blues that is known as the blues scale. In fact, there are two, a minor Blues, and a major Blues.
The ...
10
The hard impact of the string on the buzzing fret will take some of the energy from the vibrating string (mostly from the lower frequency energy, as this is the energy represented in the larger-amplitude aspects of the vibration), and convert it into higher-frequency energy that both forms a new pattern of vibration of the string, and also causes the fret ...
9
Tab notation does not include any timing information -- the closest you get is bar lines, which at least helps you orientate yourself.
Some books present tab alongside a traditional musical score, so you can get pitch, timing and phrasing from the stave, and choice of string/fret from the tab. The notes on the tabs are lined up with the notes on the stave.
...
9
Tab, in my opinion, is great for getting the general pattern or notes of a song, but pretty poor at conveying real musical information. It would be pretty difficult to sight read a song notated in tab that you had never heard before, as tab does not provide note lengths and expression symbols in the same way that notation does. I have always used tab to ...
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