Bass Gym: Mastering Minor Pentatonic Sextuplets Through Shape-Based Fingering

Life is crazy. One moment you feel on top of the world, and the next you experience something dreadful. You’re having a pleasant conversation with your spouse, which suddenly turns into a battle over some trivial topic. Your day at work starts brilliantly, with everything going smoothly, only for some hidden issues you forgot about to resurface.

The same can be said for playing the bass. You start with a funky groove, but then you take your sextuplet technique to an almost ridiculous level. Why am I doing this to myself? Most of the time, the answer is simply that it’s fun. Yes, you can have fun while playing super-fast chops without feeling overwhelmed or pushed to your limits.

In our case, we will be playing with a challenging Ab minor pentatonic scale (Ab, Cb, Db, Eb, Gb). This is not the harmony we often play, so it’s refreshing to rediscover our game between the fret marks on the fingerboard.
Playing sextuplets is tricky, but playing them in the minor pentatonic scale creates geometric shapes — rectangles, or four-note patterns on two neighboring strings. This method helps us to play fast fingerings, as we can use only the index and little fingers. Use sweeping across the strings with your right hand to make your moves more economical.

The biggest challenge is bar four, as it consists of a long lick playing the Ab minor pentatonic scale on the 12th fret, so you will need to slow down, tweak it, and then speed up. But I trust you, fellow bass aficionado! You can do it!

Follow along with the tab and notation.