[fanciful bass chords]
I'm gonna show you left hand
fretting technique for bass.
The left hand is really important on bass
because without it, we
would only get four notes
E, A, D, G, the open strings,
but because we can press down
on all of these fretted areas,
we can get more like 80 to 100 notes
depending on how many frets
you have on your bass.
So it's really cool.
It does a lot of good stuff
and I'm gonna show you
how to do it well.
So here's the lowdown
on left hand technique,
you wanna use all four
of your fingers okay,
index, middle ring, and pinky
even though it's gonna feel weak at first
it will get used to playing bass
and you'll be able to use it
just as good as any other finger.
Your thumb should be nice
and relaxed, kinda chillin'
on the middle of the back of the neck
so not up here okay and not off in space
touching the neck, but
not pressing into it.
So just nice and relaxed,
flowing around the neck.
Your fingers should be
perpendicular to the strings
or parallel to the fret wires,
six of one, half a dozen of the other,
rather than slanted like this, okay?
So you wanna aim for
basically, perpendicular,
you're gonna be a little bit more slanted
when you're further away from your body
but you don't want this
you still want relatively perpendicular,
it's really important
for a number of reasons.
When you're actually fretting notes
you wanna aim for the middle
towards the end of the fret.
Okay, so let's say I'm
playing on the third fret
I don't wanna fret here 'cause
it's gonna sound like this.
[buzzing sound]
So if that's not the sound
you're trying to make,
you wanna move towards the
middle or the end of the fret.
The reason for that is you get
a stronger angle of contact
on the fret wire the closer you are to it.
So you can even be almost all
the way up on the fret wire
as long as you don't go past it
'cause then you'll start
getting the next note
which is not what you want.
So middle towards the end of the fret
is what you're aiming for when you fret
notes on bass all across the board.
The overall goal with left
hand technique on bass
is to be as relaxed as possible.
So you wanna mimic what your body is like
when you're at your most relaxed.
So if your arms are just
hanging at your sides,
you got a loose shoulder loose elbow
relaxed wrists and your fingers
are gently curled, right
your hand doesn't tend to go like this,
you actually have to tense it to do that
this is more relaxed than this.
So this is what you're shooting
for when you play bass,
nice relaxed curled-forward fingers,
little bit of curl in the wrist sometimes
depending on where you are,
what shapes you need to
make with your fingers
but you wanna avoid backwards
angles and straightness
and stuff when you don't need it
because it's a waste of effort.
And you also wanna be able
to move fluidly up and down
the neck so you don't want
a lot of extra friction,
which means don't grip with
your thumb, nice relaxed thumb
and also don't contact
the neck here on your palm
especially on the index finger
side people tend to do that.
So you see I have some negative
space here between the neck
and my hand, I'm only
touching with my fingertips
that I'm fretting with and my thumb,
I'm not touching with my palm here.
And there's a whole cluster of issues
you can avoid by keeping
your palm off the neck
'cause if I put my palm on
the neck all of a sudden,
my fingers are at backward angles,
they're twisted towards my body
and it's hard to use my pinky
because it's being pulled
away from the neck.
So if you don't do that
you can get the perpendicular thing,
the all four fingers thing
and the relaxed forward curve
thing all happening at once,
which is really great.
One last technical thing it's
actually about terminology,
'cause we use the words up and
down in a very specific way
on the bass and I like
to tell my students this
so that they can sound like they know
what they're talking about
and also be less confused when
I'm telling them what to do.
So going this direction is
actually going up a string.
The reason for that is you
use the words up and down,
related to pitch not related to gravity.
So the E string is a lower
pitch string than the A string,
the D string or the G string.
So if I to go up a
string from the E string,
I mean to go up to the A string
because this note is
lower than this note okay,
E string is lower than the A
string lower than the D string
just lower than the G string.
So this is upper string,
this is down a string.
As you can see, it's reversed from gravity
as you would normally be oriented,
playing bass unless you're
playing bass in a handstand,
but you just have to deal with it.
It's actually a lot simpler
because it's always about pitch.
It's very consistent
and same thing with frets.
This is going up a fret up the neck, okay
because I'm going to higher, higher notes.
This is going down the neck
'cause I'm going down
to lower pitch notes.
So we don't care about gravity
when we're playing bass
it's all about the direction of the pitch.
So this is up a fret, this is up strings.
This is going down a string,
this is going down a fret.
Okay, make sense?
That's how we do it.
Now I'm gonna show you
how to play a bass groove
where we're gonna practice
using all four of our fingers
and some of the other stuff I talked
about in musical context
before I teach it to you,
let's just take a lesson
and get it in our ear.
[weird prog play-along]
Okay, so this one came out a little weird
kind of an indie-prog-fusion experiment,
but what I'm gonna do,
Music is a peculiar mistress
so here's how you play this thing.
This is almost as though this
was written by a bass teacher
because it's gonna be a great exercise
for using all four of
your left hand fingers.
So we're gonna start with the 9th fret
on the E string with our index finger.
So get your index finger,
find the 9th fret,
which on your bass is
probably the fourth dot down
you probably have 3rd,
5th, 7th and 9th dotted.
So this is your last single
dot before the double dot.
Okay, so index finger,
9th fret of the E string
then we go stay in that position,
just put your middle finger
down on the 10th fret
then your ring finger
down on the 11th fret
and your pinky down on the 12th fret.
So we're just going 9th
10th 11th 12th frets
with each finger, index,
middle ring and pinky.
Okay, let's try plucking those together
don't really worry about rhythm,
just kind of give it a
pluck or two as we go.
So 9th fret with the index finger
pluck that a couple times, 10th
fret with the middle finger,
pluck that a bit, ring
finger on the 11th fret,
pluck, pluck, pluck, pluck,
and then pinky on the 12th
fret pluck, pluck, pluck,
pluck, pluck you see I'm
keeping my fingers down
as I do that, that's some
high-tech... umm.... umm...
technique efficiency stuff
that you don't have to worry about
if you just started playing
your hand might look more like this.
Okay, your fingers might
be coming up as you go.
Don't worry about that for now
if you're just starting out,
we'll talk more about that in a bit.
Okay, so those are the first
four notes of this line,
just 9th 10th 11th 12th
fret on the E string.
Next, we're gonna do the
same thing on A string
9th fret with the index
10th fret with the middle
11th fret with the ring and
12th fret with the pinky
and that's the whole bassline.
So we're just going back and forth
between the E and the A string
going 9th 10th 11th 12th
9th, 10th 11th 12th with pinky or sorry,
index middle ring pinky,
index middle ring pinky.
So wowie, this is what
happens when your bass teacher
writes music for you.
It's a perfect technical exercise
to use all four of your fingers in order.
Okay, so let's try playing this together
at a nice slow pace before
we bring in the track.
I'm gonna count 1 2 3 4
and then we're gonna start
playing together and we're gonna play
what's called half notes
which means we're gonna
pluck on one and three.
Okay, so we're gonna go,
I'll just demonstrate
once 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4
then the A string, same
thing 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4.
So here I'm plucking on
one and three every time
so each note last for two counts.
The first note last through one and two,
second last two three and four
and then we repeat the count.
Got it, let's try that even
slower than I just did it.
Ready, so starting with
the index on the 9th fret
of the E string 9 10 11 12,
then A string, same thing
1 2 3 4, 9th fret to 10 four,
11th to 12th for A string
same thing, 9th fret to
10th Fret four 11 fret
to 12th fret again 1 2 3 4,
1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4.
Let's end on our starting
note, boom okay, nice.
So right hand pattern on this
we haven't talked about yet.
It's slow enough that you could actually
use your index finger only
to pluck this whole thing
Okay, so if alternating
is too much for you
you can always just go
back to that for now
what you eventually wanna do
for practice purposes on this
is practice alternating,
so you're going index,
middle, index, middle,
index, middle, index, middle
repeat index, middle index,
middle, index, middle
index middle, so just alternating strictly
works out really well
'cause we've got four notes
on each string, so you
just go 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2
it's an easy pattern to repeat.
So that's what we're shooting for, again
you can just go index
finger with the right hand
'cause what we're really focusing on
is using all four of our
fingers with the left hand
and again, we're shooting
for perpendicular okay,
so not slanty fingers because
that pulls the pinky away
from where it wants to get
no contact with the palm
nice, relaxed thumb,
gentle forward angles and
the wrists and the fingers,
just everything feeling nice and relaxed
as much as possible.
If you're just starting on bass,
it's not gonna feel that
relaxed but it will over time.
Okay, here we go playing
along with the track.
We're gonna do this at a slow speed,
a medium speed and then the full speed
that you heard in our
little sneak peek earlier.
Okay, so here we go with
the slow speed four clicks
and then we're in 2 3 4 9th fret,
10th fret, 11th fret, 12 fret
to the A string 1 2 3 4,
1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4,
9th fret to 10th fret four
11th fret to 12th fret four.
Okay onwards we go to the medium speed
a little bit faster and remember
if you ever need more practice
time at the slow speeds
we've got extended audio
play along at BassBuzz.com
you can jam along for a longer time
you don't have to like rewind
the video over and over.
Okay, so here's the medium speed 1 2 3 4,
1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4
keep your thumb as relaxed as you can see
on the back of the neck.
Fingers perpendicular, nice
gentle curves everywhere.
Okay, let's take this to the full speed
and we're gonna play along a
little bit longer this time
now that we're at full rockin
tempo, here we go, 1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4
So there's a lot of stuff to think about
with bass left hand technique
and there's a lot of stuff
we didn't even get into today
because you just can't do it all at once.
It's way too much stuff.
You just have to do your best
and then refine over time,
just something that I
continue to do after a decade
and a half of playing.
So I hope you had fun,
thanks for playing with me
and I'll see you next time.
