One of the things when positioning our hand, we want to make sure that our hand is as comfortable as it can possibly be. So, that will enable us to play not only slowly and thoroughly but faster too. It will be, if you want to be able to play fast which a lot of modern bass players to play really fast. You need to have start correctly, so with our right hand, we are going to position ourselves so that our elbow and forearm rest on the bass body, in a comfortable way so that you can play all of the strings. You want to be able to reach the strings.
A lot of people do a bad habit. They put their thumb on their pick-up and then they play the strings. What this does? Your thumb sweats while you are playing and you will eventually corrode the pick-up so badly with the acid from your body that you will have to get a new pick-up. So, if you want to save money, do not rest your thumb here. If you want to spend a lot of money, just keep your thumb here. If you want to save money, take your thumb off.
And press to play more fluid, you need your hand to be able to play because I am going to just play one note but I am going to show something. If I play on this side of the bass, more towards the finger board, I get a deeper tone. When I play more back here towards where the bridge is, I get a thinner tone. Okay, I am going to demonstrate that by doing something that you are not going to be able to play it but I just want to demonstrate the sound and play the same thing at two different places. So, if I play [Music Playing] if I play that up here, you can hear that it sounds a lot deeper. But if I play it back here [Music Playing] you can hear that it sounds a lot treblier and [Music Playing] when Jacko play his stuff, Jacko played more towards this side because he was able to have access to his harmonics [Music Playing] as opposed to down here, where you get a richer tone. But he used the old bass essentially so that he can have different tone or knowledge as well as so that the base can sound different.
But before we get that far, we need to get the basics on where we hold our hand. We want to position it somewhere between the first pick-up and the second pick-up. Wherever you feel comfortable with, but the main thing that is important is that you do not rest your thumb on anything. So that you build-up your hand _____, okay?
So, when we talked about walking, using finger, alternating fingers, we are basically going one finger and the first and second finger, okay. So, you can see how that is done right there, okay. So, when we would go, _____ to play quartet notes [Music Playing] when we play eight note, stay with B [Music Playing]. And when we play sixteenth notes, it would be [Music Playing]. Okay, so if you can see, when I am doing the sixteenth notes [Music Playing] the hand is getting the most movement and the most exercise but if you do not start of by doing the quarter notes, remember this is starting at eighty beats per minute, o if we are not doing our basic things, we can get to the faster things, and once again, make sure those notes ring out, okay?
So, and I do not have a problem if you want to play back here on your bass more towards your bridge, this is your bridge, this is your pick-ups, this is out net. So if you want to play when your bridge is, I do not have a problem with that everybody is different, and do what feels right, just try to do it correctly. And the correct way is by not like having to depend on the pick-ups to build your hands _____ because if you depend on the pick-ups, and I know a lot of basses, a lot of _____ basses come with a little _____ right here which was really for when you play with the pick, so that you could g\hold on, okay.
People rest their hand on that. But like I say, if you want to get to the point where you ca n be playing fast, I cannot do that if I am like on the bridge because it slows me down, if I am resting my thumb on something that will slow me down okay. So, remember just try to have the _____so that it can move freely here. Try to alternate on all of these exercises between first and second finger, okay?
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