In a previous post about learning how to play the bass, I alluded to a fundamental problem that I was having. Even more fundamental than not knowing the notes...
I was having a hard time keeping time.
I have gotten better since then. It's still a weak point, but I'm much better than I was.
Back when I played guitar, it wasn't so bad. When I felt myself going off beat, I'd just sync myself up with the drummer and/or the bass player, and then I would go on my merry way. Since I played rhythm, all I had to do was get the strumming hand to go up and down and up and down at approximately the right speed and with the occasional nudge from fellow bandmates, I could stay on beat without too many problems.
But the bass! Just a note. I'm just playing a note, with no strumming hand to keep my time for me. And when I think back a year ago, oh, it was bad, it was so bad I didn't even know how I could possibly start fixing it.
So I am going to share with you a few exercises that I developed that were born out of my frustration at having so many problems with staying on the beat.
Here's the first insight. When playing the bass, you have to get the count in your head. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. Etc. I always thought it was kind of a musical cliche, almost a literary trope. As if people say "one, two, three, four" before a song because it was just tradition! I didn't know there was a utility or meaning to it.
Well there is. As a bass player, it's very important. The things you do on the ONE are different than the kinds of things you do on the FOUR. Knowing where you are in the count is very important to establishing a groove that connects with people on a fundamental level.
So here is the first exercise I came up with. Listening to music, and counting it off in my head. Any music, as long as it is in 4/4 time. I would put the iPod on shuffle and count my way through the playlist.
The idea here is to pay attention to the count, and how it affects the song I am listening to. Get that 1, 2, 3, 4 in my head. At first I had to literally count, as time went on I could do it silently in my head, and now it's starting to be more of a feeling than a literal count (although I still count from time to time when I need to or when I am learning a new song.)
That's the first exercise. Now, I'm going to tell you about The One.
No, not that One! I mean the One in the One, Two, Three, Four. When you are playing the bass on a funk song, you got to come in hard on the one. You got to hit that fundamental note. The note you hit is the root note of the chord that the band is playing.
Here, watch this short video to see what I'm talking about:
ONE, two, three, four, ONE, two, three, four. That ONE is the anchor of the whole song. (This is funk, of course, other styles of music may have different anchors.)
So now we come to exercise number two. I found a backing track on Youtube. Here's a good one:
This backing track is in D. The whole thing is in D. So I found a D on the fretboard. Second string, fifth fret. I started up the backing track, and I played a D on the ONE.
That's it, that's the whole thing. One song, one note, on the one. The whole point is to slow down and hit that string EXACTLY on the ONE. No other notes. Just count through the song, ONE, two, three, four, and hit that one note on the ONE. I tried to put all of my energy into the timing.
Now, why this? I'll tell you why: it beats the hell out of playing with a metronome. Metronome is just clicks. I can't relate to a metronome. But drums! Drums I can connect with.
Even so, I have to admit, only playing one note on the ONE gets a little boring after about a minute. And by the time the backing track was done, it was kind of a relief.
Then, I played it again. And again. And again. When I thought I couldn't possibly stand it one more time, I played it one more time after that. I used that frustrated bored energy and I focused it on what I was doing: getting that note exactly right.
After a few times through I got a little better. And then a little better. And so on.
Now, I explicitly forbade myself from playing any other notes. At all. Even though I had all kinds of cool notes going through my head, I had no idea how to play them. So I stuck with just one note. The whole point of this exercise anyway is the timing, the sticking to the ONE.
If you try this exercise I would love to hear how it went for you.
When you have reached the point where you want to play other notes, look up the pentatonic minor blues scale. Play any of those notes between the ONE. If you get bored with those notes, try others. There's a whole mess of notes on the fretboard. Try things out and see what sounds good. Try other backing tracks too. Just make sure you get back to the ONE.
BONUS: check out this Bootsy Collins video where he tells the story of James Brown showing him about the importance of the ONE: