Pentatonic Exercise For Bass Players
This could help all bass players no matter what your level or style of playing.
I’m a firm believer of there being no such thing as the “only” way to learn something. At the same time, I think there are a few things that can help everyone out, as long as you know what both your needs and your goals are.
We’ll all use them slightly differently, but the content could well be identical even if the concept is not.
I want to share the sheet music for one of the exercises I was using in the latest episode of the podcast. If you haven’t checked it out, the full episode is right here on the Substack, and I’ve clipped out the exercise into a new “Podcast Clips” video that goes live today.
For the people subscribed to my newsletter, I want to provide a little more depth to the idea, and consolidate some things conceptually that might help you integrate it into your routine.
The exercise as it stands in the book, exactly as you see me using it in the video, is a great help for a number of things. I’m coming back from a bout of food poisoning and also cutting my pinky finger with a razor blade. So this forced time away from the instrument has set me back a little, and kind of destroyed all the momentum I had going for a couple of weeks.
In that sense, it’s a great little idea to have something simple, repetitive, and covering both harmony and melody while you get your time and sound back to where it needs to be.
So for anyone who has the book, and therefore access to the play alongs and videos, I want you to consider a few options to multiply the content of the book (and any piece of learning material for that matter) at least 5 fold.
I’m all about all-twelve-keys, and I think the real progress with an idea like this comes when you can dedicate some time to working an idea like this through the entire range of the instrument in 12 keys. Obviously the play alongs are only in the keys the book is written in, but challenge yourself to use a loop pedal, or a DAW if you have access to one, to make your own loops for the other keys.
Another thing you can do with the play alongs, if you have access to a DAW, is chop them up and change the sequence. The more you can customize the material to your needs, the more productive you’re going to be.
Even without a looper or DAW, I often play with no effects and simply comp for one bar to hear the harmony, and play the line for one bar. This is hugely effective if you ever have plans to take a solo or play melodically. We all know the band’s favorite thing to do when it comes to the bass solo is to lay out - something I find incredibly annoying and have no problem yelling at them to keep playing. But if you find yourself with no choice but to go it alone, having both comped and played melodically in close succession in your practice routine before, will really give you confidence to be yourself and play what you hear no matter what anyone else around you decides to do.
I highly recommend looking for a secondary function with anything you practice. Not to the point where you overload your brain and don’t actually focus on anything. But pick something simple, and have it cooking away on a back burning while most of your focus is on the main exercise. I’ve only shared the standard bass notation with you in this post for that exact reason. It’s not a Rachmaninov piano concerto score, it’s just the same line repeated over and over again. So use that as a sight recognition exercise as you play the line whilst reading the music. Reading is all about repetition, and there’s nothing like a long-form repetitive idea like this to cement the visual association of those written notes to the music you’re playing.
Never lose sight of your time and your sound. If you need discipline to learn a line and the play along is too fast for you, grab the metronome and take that sucker way down until you’re comfortable. There is absolutely no rush, and the longer you spend at lower tempos, the more natural everything will feel the more you increase the speed. If you’re not happy with your sound, don’t just plow on regardless. Stop and address it immediately, and get used to a troubleshooting process with your gear, or a better warm-up routine for your hands to get your tone production to a place you’re happy with it. Or at very least, to a place where you think you can build upon what you have to make progress.
That’s it for today folks. I hope the suggestions inspire some progress in your playing, and let me know in the comments if there’s something more specific you’re having an issue with. It might make for an interesting post in the coming weeks.
Janek