Thursday, October 15, 2009

Online Bass Lessons: Cover All The Styles

By Stacy Williams

Are you serious about wanting to improve you bass guitar playing? If you are, then one of the most productive things you can do is work on your scales. It has even been said that the level of your scale playing pretty much determines the level of your bass playing overall! I have designed these exercises to help you to develop a more accurate sense of rhythm and to improve the speed and agility of your bass guitar scales.

Bass practice with fretboard patterns should include things such as the use of sweep picking with the 3 note per string pentatonic scale in the rock or blues bass style. You want to be able to practice with many different scales patterns as possible so that you are able to execute the runs and licks and lead lines of a wide variety of bass players and style of music that you personally are interested in.

It can be played by plucking, slapping, tapping, popping, or by picking the strings with a pick. The bass guitar looks somewhat similar to an electric guitar, but with a larger, heavier body, a longer scale length, and a longer neck. The bass guitar usually has four strings, tuned one octave lower in pitch than the four lower strings of a guitar.

For instance, you've already heard about "slap bass" for sure. Slap is a very common technique and, because of the use in rock situation it has became one of the most popular technique in bass playing nowadays.

When you hear the term learn slap bass, what it refers to is learning how to play certain techniques on the bass guitar. No matter what the other instruments in a band sound like, the bass guitar is crucial and is really the glue that holds the whole thing together. Slap bass is a way of playing the bass guitar.

Unfortunately, it turns out to be harder than it looks. Here's why: The muscles that move your hands and fingers across the neck and strings are rarely used for other tasks. The fine motor skills needed to play a stringed instrument require that the small muscles of the hands be strengthened. So when you take up the bass, you're like a baby learning to walk: Not only do you have no idea of what you're doing, you don't even have the muscles to do it.

Keep the end of the thumb of your left hand in the middle of the back of the bass neck. Keep your left thumb perpendicular to the neck. When reaching for notes, don't let your thumb go parallel to the neck; shift position instead

So, now that you have the basic steps on hand position for playing your bass guitar. Now, what you've got to do is learn some other basic stuff, like scales, techniques and song. Be sure that you actually WANT to learn and don't let the frustration discourage you!

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