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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 ...
20
There's plenty of 5-string basses out there. I'd just write it. You can give a 4-string player a get-out like this. But he'd do it anyway.
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 ...
19
You've expressed an accurate sense of why there is a theory advantage with the piano, but since you also very clearly are drawn to the bass, a couple of comments:
Particularly if you play jazz or popular music, you will by necessity learn a huge amount about chords and scales and how they relate, because this is the essence of bass's harmonic role in a band....
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 ...
16
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 ...
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 is a big difference in the sound of the lowest Eb on a 4 string bass and an Eb an octave lower so if that is the sound you want go after it. As a bassist if I know someone wants that note or any note lower than an E I will do one of three things:
If I’m playing 4 string and I need an Eb or a D for a song or two I drop my E string down to a D which can ...
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".
14
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. ...
14
I don’t have full calluses, but my fingertips are definitely harder when I play regularly than when I go for a couple of months without playing.
I find the harder skin really helps hammer-ons be precise and sharp, and they don’t seem to take away from sensitivity.
I guess it shouldn’t matter much either way - you obviously do fine without any, I have harder ...
13
I'm a full time guitarist. When I was young I couldn't afford good instruments, so my guitars fought me all the time, and I had really thick calluses - if I tapped my fingertips against a glass you would have thought they were metal from the sound.
Now I have good instruments that are properly maintained, so even though I play for hours every single day my ...
12
+ 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 ...
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 ...
12
Bass amps have been used by guitarists for many decades. In some instances, they work better for guitarists than other amps designed for guitars, especially the speakers. If you are going to use effects pedals, they will do just fine, but if you're looking for something that will overdrive and distort, bass amps generally aren't designed with that in mind. ...
12
All good advice in the other answers. The thing I’d add is, have a reason to play regularly. What that reason is will be down to you.
Join a band, go to a regular jam session, be working towards your next exam or lesson, if you’re religious join the band at your church.
What exactly it is you do is actually fairly unimportant at this stage - the key is ...
12
The main role of a Bass is going to be different depending on the style. My answer is going to relate to Pop/rock.
Rhythm:
The Bass guitar is part of the rhythm section. Obviously the drums are also part of the rhythm section so the two are going to be tightly coupled. But that doesn't mean the drums and bass are locked together. It is common for the bass ...
12
The standard way to do notate slaps and pops is to use a letter above or below the note to specify the technique and a standard or "x" note head to specify whether the note is sounded or muted.
Different sources adhere to different standards regarding the letters used to indicate slap, but it's usally "S" or "T". Pops are ...
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
Electric bass strings are much thicker, hence heavier, than electric guitar strings - this allows them to sound at a much lower frequency without needing double the length. (Guitars have scale lengths in the region 24-25 inches, electric basses around 30-34 inches depending on the style. The thickest guitar strings are usually a single steel core with a ...
11
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 ...
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). ...
11
There are many different ways to approach the bass and the approach that you take may depend on what styles/genres of music you are playing. The first thing that you want to do is understand the traditional role/function of the bass within a piece of music. Speaking generally, the bass is used to add depth to the harmonic content and to connect the rhythm ...
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
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
Yes, by convention when schematically drawing the strings of an instrument, the strings are drawn ordered top-down from the higher pitched to the lower pitched. So, in a drawing, the 1st string of an instrument is actually at the top and the last string (the 6th in the case of a guitar) is represented at the bottom.
As a mnemonic, if you know a little ...
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