Bass Lesson Archives - Page 3

In this episode, Ari covers another chromatic workout. These chromatic lines are really fun to play, and they’re also a great technique workout for both our right and left hands. Not only that, they’re basically the musical application of permutation exercises.

In this new episode of “Talking Technique,” Ari is giving us the ultimate challenge for our right hand technique. Can you alternate your index and middle fingers throughout this demanding plucking exercise?

In this lesson, Lorin Cohen shares an arpeggio exercise that develops our “Vertical” approach to the fingerboard and the ability to ascend swiftly up the neck.

Here’s another “Chromatic Acrobatic Phantasy” for you to shed your technique. Chromatic approaches sound exciting and driving. How can you use them in your grooves? Can you pull off the fast version while staying relaxed? Have a go at it, it’s worth it.

This week, Damian received a question about creating bass lines with minimalism and implication versus overt and fuller harmonic context. This is a deep question, so instead of just writing about it, he decided to make a video to play through some ideas and talk it out.

In this video, we’ll take a quick look at the usefulness of one of the lesser used fingers… the plucking hand’s pinky!

In this video, I’ll talk you through the basics of developing a walking bass line in addition to demonstrating a few approaches. There’s also a nice exercise at the end that’ll really challenge most of you as you explore new ways to navigate chord changes. Enjoy! Follow along with this chord chart I used in this lesson.

In this video, I’ll be talking a bit about how I try and apply exercises in a more open and musical context (aka, have more fun with them). There are a few minutes of talking and then a lot of playing around with the ideas we’ve been covering for the past few weeks. I hope you all get something from...

This lesson is a bit of a continuation from last week. Again, we’ll be dealing with more ways to internalize the major scale and related modes across the fretboard. Specifically, we’ll be working through a nice double-stop exercise as well as using some brain twisting broken intervallic exercises.

We’re continuing our exercise series this week with a lesson on modal arpeggio patterns. Learning modes, scales, and patterns help to open the fretboard up in your mind. You learn the connections, intervals, and relationships of the notes. Some of this sounds more complicated than it is. Hang in there and we will work it all out.

In this new bass lick lesson, we’re going to combine harmonics and double stops with a Mixolydian scale fill. First, I’ll play it at full tempo, then around the 1-minute mark, I cover it slowly for you to follow along. Be sure to grab the backing drum track for playing along at full speed.

For the next few weeks, we’ll be going over some more lesson oriented topics. I’m kicking off the series with a look at percussive techniques on the bass, specifically using your plucking hand. There are some easy techniques to approach as well as some more difficult ones. Work on these slowly with a metronome starting with the basic patterns before...