hi my name is Danny Ziemann and you're about to watch a lesson from a new video
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continuing from the air bass the next step for me is to practice playing open
strings and frequently when I have new students the first thing we'll do is
just practice open strings and the practicing of open strings allows us to
think about the way our arm moves just playing quarter notes it gets us to
focus on reacting to different tension within the string so trying to keep a
consistent sound while dealing with different physical elements and lastly
it gets me focused on sound so for me sound is the most important defining
characteristic of my musicianship and the most supportive thing that I can
supply my band mates and for me I always think about my sound and my time feel is
being synonymous if I have a consistent sound where the length of note is really
well articulated and thoughtful then that's going to make the time feel even
more comfortable for other people however if it's kind of haphazard and
the accents are different and I'm not really concerned with how my
sound is being communicated then that's going to make my time feel less
comfortable so I would encourage you to think about the importance of sound as
the core part of your time feel so as we're practicing the open strings I like
to practice with the metronome and I set it to 80 bpm
now I have an iPhone I'm an iPhone user and I have an app called Tempo and Tempo
is just a simple metronome and the reason I like this I believe it's it's a
dollar I like to set the metronome sound so there's no down beat and so there's
no pitch because it messes with my my focus when I'm practicing so I typically
set it to 1/4 instead of 4/4 so there's no downbeat and then sound wise I set it
to some type of wooden block or a blip that has no defining pitch for this
exercise we're going to set it to 80 bpm
and all I'm gonna do is just start from G and go down through G, D, A and E and
then repeat G, D, A and E when I'm doing this I try to find an articulation
that's comfortable for me a spot to place my hand usually I go towards the
end of the fingerboard I'm not going to tell you how to define your sound
that's up to you there's all this range that you can practice with so there's
more just about the consistency in sound so I do this every time I pick up the
bass for at least five minutes with the metronome and I think about consistency
in articulation I think about how I'm actually using my arm weight to pull
through the string you'll see some people who will pluck mostly from their
finger or you'll get some of this kind of movement it's really up to you how
you choose to articulate this my personal preference is to think more
about dropping my arm way into the string because the larger muscle groups
I use the easier it is for me to keep it in time and then again I'm not thinking
about time is coming from a finger but time is coming from a more core central
part of my body so as I'm doing this I'm also thinking about the articulation
that I'm producing I'm trying to get more of a percussive
sound so that would sound like that's a huge part of my sound is just that
articulation and the stronger and more focused your articulation is the easier
it's going to be for everybody else to be able to understand and relate to your
pulse the sensation that I feel it gets my finger is almost like when you snap
your fingers where you put a lot of pressure on your finger and then pull it
quickly so it's the same thing just with the first finger if you can't snap it's
okay I've had some students tell me they have problems snapping so don't worry
about it just try to understand the concept when you're when you're playing
it down here and again you're just trying to match up with the metronome
and get used to all the movements in between the actual articulation of the
note so where the arm weight falls how much you're prepping it how consistently
loud you are if you can get the same articulation at a quiet volume if you
can do it higher maybe below the end of the fingerboard and all those choices
are up to you I would encourage you to explore all of these things as you're
going through this exercise
now the last thing I do with this is try to play the quarter note triplets while
maintaining the same pulse and that's going to be another common theme through
these videos is that we are responsible for manipulating the pulse and the
metronome only helps us keep our time straight but it's up to us to make
everything comfortable within that so playing quarter note triplets over this
pulse is going to help us dip our toe into the pool of working with
subdivisions so as I'm doing this I'm going to thank 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3
so you can keep the pulse going while you're actually thinking about that you
can stop and get yourself focused and think 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3
and that I might go back to
open strings again
so again that forms the beginning of my workout my warmup
and I want that to be a nice meditative way to get into playing the bass so five
minutes of that again 80 BPM I found as a tempo that's not too fast where you
can really get the instrument moving but it's also not so slow or it feels like
you're just dredging through the the five minutes so practice this in the
next video we're gonna do a few more subdivisions in different ways you can
incorporate different fingerings in the right hand thank you for watching the
video I really hope you enjoyed the lesson for more information again click
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