Have you considered online bass guitar lessons? What usually gets people started with bass guitar is the desire to form a band, or to be a part of a band. Maybe you already know how to play guitar, and your friends play guitar too–but you all can’t be the lead guitarist or the rhythm guitarist. Someone needs to play bass. Maybe that someone is you.

Even a professional like Tiger Woods has a teacher or a coach that makes sure he never looses site of the foundations that built his golf game to what it is today. This article will touch on three things that a bass player playing the bass must always lock in to memory and never forget: Hand Positioning, Wrist Movement, and Thumb Attack.

Bass players want to be able to play the type of leads, licks and arpeggio runs that the pro players are doing, yes since most bass players have a really poor knowledge of their fretboard patterns and their application of them is so limited that it becomes a set back to their ability to play more and do more with their instrument.

In struggling simply to get out the notes, though, it’s easy to neglect developing the hand’s small muscles. The result can be a great deal of wasted energy and motion, limiting one’s technique. So here’s a few suggestions about the slap technique:

It combines the plucking of the bottom notes with the percussive hits that the palm makes when it slaps the strings against the fingerboard. Slap bass is a very percussive style. It’s invention (on electric bass) has been credited to Larry Graham, of funk bands Sly& the Family Stone and Graham Central Station, allegedly improvising on an occasion when their band was left without a drummer! Slap bass is a must for the musicians who use spectacular and popular funk slap techniques which demands specific snappy attacks.

Attacking The Strings: The most important part to remember while starting to take slap bass lessons is the amount of intensity used to attack the strings. Now that you know the proper hand positioning and wrist movement you must know how to attack the strings with your thumb. With your thumb in position as described under the Hand Positioning section strike the low E string with the middle knuckle of your thumb and hit it pretty hard to get that classic “thump’ sound and then immediately release.

Play the scale four times completely through using sixteenth notes. This means that you must play 4 notes for each metronome beat. Again, if 60 bpm is too fast, slow it down to a tempo at which you can play the exercise perfectly. We play this exercise four time through , not only to increase your speed, but also to build your endurance–your ability to play faster for longer periods of time.

Once that you feel comfortable with the scales, it’ll be time to move to other techniques to increase your skills and vocabulary. But scales should never be overlooked, they build your playing and playing them on your bass also serves you as an ear training exercise.

You’ll never have to worry about bass video lessons again! Visit us on the web at learn how to play bass guitar to learn more.

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