How to Play Bass for Beginners - Lesson 12
Hi, it’s Paul Wolf from how-to-play-bass.com, this is the 12th and final lesson of my virtual DVD on how to play the bass for beginners. Before we get started, I want to recommend you head over to my website it’s at how-to-play-bass.com, sign up for the free escene. Totally free, features articles, real life bass lines for you to learn and play and some other cool stuff. Okay, in today’s lesson we’ll gonna look at three mistakes that I commonly see with beginners. If you’re just starting out, it's much easier to fix little flaws in your technique now than in the years time when they’re embedded in your style of how you play. Okay, the first mistake we’re gonna look at that I see often with beginners is the thumb position when they’re doing their picking and what beginners often tend to do is they play on the E string, and they move up to the A string, but they leave their thumb on the top of the pickup. Now that’s kind of okay, coz the by the coming through doing the rest stroke you’re deadening the E string anyway, but listen to what happens when you go up to the D string. Don’t know if you can hear that, but what’s happening is the E string is starting to vibrate and make a noise. So it’s really, really crucial, you go back and look at that lesson when you move from the E string to the A string, but your thumb moves down and mutes the E string, and then when you move to the D string, but your thumb’s moving down, and the top of the thumb is on the A string, so that’s muting the A string and the side of your thumb here, don’t have the angle to really show you, but the side of the thumb is resting against the E string. So if you play an open E, sorry, not an open E, play E, 2nd fret of the D string, that doesn’t set off the open E string and resonating in sympathy. So that’s really crucial, you have to start out and just play really slow, and do so. There’s no shame starting out something like this really, really slowly and then working up your speed. But that’s something that’s really, really crucial to get right. Okay, mistake number two that we’re gonna look at is maintaining the one finger per fret spacing with your left hand on the fret board. This is really crucial and it gives you more notes on your fingers than if you crop your fingers up. It’s something that I can't emphasize enough. The ditch tool independence exercise that we look up briefly in the video lesson is covered in more detail in the PDF that you can download. Please, please download it, have a good read, print it out, make sure that you understand. Do the exercise every day. Even if you have to go at this kind of speed. And what you’re aiming to try to do is go through the whole of the exercise, and move your left hand as little as possible. The more you do that, the more the fingers and your strength will gain independence, durability, etcetera, etcetera, so that when you come to play more complex pieces, play for a longer periods, you won't have any fingers that are any weaker than any of the others. So that’s number two and that’s really crucial. Okay, the last thing I wanna look at is something that’s not been covered in any of the video lessons. It’s mentioned briefly on one of the PDF’s, and it has to do with the right arm position when you play. Now I noticed when I’ve been watching these videos back and editing them, that it’s something I’ve fall into when I am sitting down. And when I’m standing up playing, it's not a problem, but when I’m sitting down, this is what I’m doing. I got my right arm, I got my thumb rested on the pick, on top of the pickup, and then what I do, is I’m leaning my arm back like that. So the middle of my arm is resting on the heel of the bass. Now, what happens then is your arm forms this, sort of like, kind of like crooked angle. If you do it yourself you’ll see it. And the reason why’s that bad, is if I put my arm like that and make a motion as if I’m doing that, you can see the tendons in my arm twitching, and they twitch all the way up to the elbow. If you do it yourself just hold your arm like that you’ll see, you’ll your tendons twitch all the way up to the elbow, and the nerves and stuff that control the fingers run in a straight line all the way through the thin sort of joint at the wrist into your fingers. So if you start doing that, what you’re doing is you’re constricting that joint there, and that will, if you’re not careful and you’re doing a lot of playing will enflame. So what you got to try and do, and it feels really unnatural at first, is you got to put your arm out at a strange angle, excuse me, so that when you’re playing those tendons aren’t being bent anyway. A, it will enable you to play faster, but B, it will stop you getting any problems in your hand any RSI, or you cramp, anything like that. And it’s, it’s something that’s really important, and I’ve really never seen teach it anywhere. It’s something you should be really conscious of. As I say, when I stand up and play, it’s not a problem. It’s only when I sit down, coz you sit down, and you relax, and you just. Suddenly your arm goes back like that, so, something that hopefully in future lessons you’ll see my arm up more like that. And it’s something for you guys to work on to. So that concludes these series of lessons for the beginner. I hope you get some helpful information along the way and are enjoying learning the songs we’ve look at in the course of this series. I’ll shortly be starting on the series of video lessons on how to construct bass lines, so that if you’re in a jam session, and someone handed you a chord chart, you will be able to work out a bass line on the spot and play along. Look out for those. Email me if you got any questions, I see you next time.