Bass Guitar Practice Exercises

[Silvina Spindler]

Youneed to practice. There's just no getting around it; it's a fact of life. But when you finally get home at the end of a long day, it can be a tough choice deciding between running yourself into the ground working on what you love, or actually unwinding. Thankfully, there can be some middle ground. Check out these five effective bass exercises that are still simple enough to do while you watch TV.

Every bandleader likes a nice, seamless, legato bassline, but as you know, this isn't as easy as great bassists make it sound. The control needed in your fingers to make a performance sound perfectly serene takes years upon years to build up. There are many exercises that involve finger control, but one of the best also involves building finger independence.

Start with your fingers spread out and pressed down one finger per fret on the E string. I personally recommended starting towards the top of your fretboard and moving this exercise down the neck, say 12th, 13th, 14th, and your pinky on the 15th fret. Pluck your E string, which should sound the high G# your pinky is fretting. Without letting up that pinky, move your index finger from the E sting to the A string where it will fret an A on the 12th fret, then pluck that note. At this time, the other three fingers should still be pressed down on their original frets. Next take the middle finger from the E to the A string in the same manner as the index finger, keeping the other three fingers still. Repeat this process for the ring finger, and then finally move the pinky up. Repeat this process moving all the fingers from the A to the D string, and finally the D to the G.

Pretty straightforward, this exercise focuses completely on the different finger combinations. Play any note with your index finger then play the note one fret up with your middle finger. Go back to the index finger, then go up to the third. Play every possible interval from your index finger, then play every possible combination from your middle finger, and then finally your ring finger will just be your ring up to your pinky. If your fingers were numbered one through four, index to pinky, the pattern would be 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 2-3, 2-4, 3-4. This makes a nice even 12 notes, so even though it will sound totally atonal, you should be able to put some rhythm behind it eventually.

One great way to practice is to arpeggiate one-octave seventh chords, starting from a different scale degree in the same scale each time. Try practicing all the different tonalities, like minor, minor b5, dominant, or major seventh, as seen in the above notation. If you're a novice bass player, this may be a bit demanding of your thinking capacity, so you may want to save this one for a commercial break until you get more comfortable with it.

Driving a stickshift may or may not be your thing, but when you're in the woodshed, the important thing is shifting left hand positions. To exercise this, go straight up the scale chromatically on one string playing with finger one, then two, three, four, and then quickly scooting your first finger up to the next note. Repeat this process until you're at the top of the fretboard, and then do it descending. You can also go one, two, three, shift, or even one, two, one, two, etc.

Shifting left hand positions is a huge part of being able to play cleanly and accurately, and often gets overlooked in practice. This exercise doesn't have to take up a ton of thought space, but it will absolutely help you play difficult passages with ease and fluidity.

When you first start, try to really focus and find a comfortable tempo and dynamic for you. Then try to think less and just rely on feeling. Let the groove become your homeostasis. This exercise can be the equivalent of joining a Buddhist monastery, so don't be surprised when you end up with more work than you bargained for from such a simple exercise. Flip on the tube, try to relax, and see what your eighth notes need.

Also, ask your teacher why you need this exercise. Is it essential for the type of music you want to learn to play? (personal note: I've been playing bass for 40 years, and never bothered with this type of exercise. My fingers haven't dropped off yet, and I haven't found a note I can't physically play...)

First and foremost, you are most likely trying to strangle the neck. Don't pull on the back so much with your thumb. Secondly, stretching isn't that necessary on bass. What's wrong with sliding your hand along?

Thirdly, you need to be asking your teacher, and if they convince you it's all needed, all well and good, listen. But actually, that stretch isn't too bad, and if it's too much, your teacher should start you on, say, fret 8 to fret 11. Unless he's anchored to playing in A. Some are!!

The process of moving from one fret to another (on the same string) doesn't have to incorporate leaving both fingers on the appropriate frets. Nice if you can, but so what if you can't? A bit of sideways movement isn't really going to marr your playing with some practice.

Overall hand position makes a big difference. If your are cramped up and at an angle to the strings it will be difficult. If you move it so that your fingers are at right-angles to the strings it will be easier.

Most of what can be said is already said. I'm missing comments about the OP's pain in the thumb, which is very far from normal. I would like to look at posture, and make sure that your thumb is not curving above and over the upper edge of the neck (maybe that's what Tim was suggesting with "strangling the neck"). The thumb should ideally be pointing towards the headstock, around the middle of the neck. Otherwise you're forcing the thumb muscles to stretch on top of the already stretched fingers.

A sus chord is a chord with no third. The third is usually replaced by either a fourth or a second. So a sus chord triad goes either root, 2nd 5th (sus2) or root, 4th, 5th (sus4). As I mentioned in the video, a sus2 triad is an inversion of a sus4 triad. So, for example Gsus4/C is Csus2. So you can think of sus2 arpeggio shapes as being the same as sus4 arpeggio shapes. The only difference is which note you think of as the root note.

The absence of the major or minor 3rd makes it ambiguous as to whether the chords are functioning as major or minor. And that ambiguity makes them very versatile. When you play these arpeggios you get a lot of perfect 4th and 5th intervals. That means that you can create modern sounding jazz lines in the style of quartal harmony.

You can set the unit up like a pedalboard. It has eight foot pedal switches for turning effects on and off. And many of the effects in the Helix are modelled on famous guitar and bass effects pedals. For example you can use a digitally modelled version of a Boss CE-1 chorus pedal or an MXR Phase 90. There are many preset patches already installed in the product when you buy it. Most are for guitar but there are plenty for bass. And you can also make your own patches. Or buy patches from other musicians online and install them into your Helix.

Of the other three patches in the video, two were 3rd party patches that I bought from other musicians. The synth bass patch came from an American bass player called Chad Carouthers and the heavily reverbed patch came from the guitarist Johnathan Cordy. The final patch featured in the video was one I made myself from scratch.

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