Hi there guys it's Ben Jones from The Institute as part of the Bass Expo for Music
Radar. We've been looking at tuning, we've done some scales, now we're going to talk
about some exercises that are going to be used, not just as warm up exercises, but just
little things that build up strength in both hands and just things that you can just jam
around with and play around with and hopefully turn into some bass lines. So what we're going
to be doing is a shape, very very simple box shape between 4 strings and 3 frets. So if
you think about it's going to be, that's a box, sitting within a square position. What
we're going to do though,which is something that's slightly different which is why i think
this works quite well, is we're going to double up on every note, so in you plucking hand
here we're just going to be going 1,2,1,2. We don't have to worry about it, but just
have to make sure we're starting with our first finger then follow with our 2nd. So
what we're going to do, is we're going to go up to the 1st fret here on the E string,
your lowest string and we're going to put our 1st finger on the 1st fret. And we're
going to play 2 notes. Then we're going to stretch over with our 4th finger to play the
3rd fret on that string, so you get 1, 1, 3, 3. Now this is where it becomes the exercise
we are going to do what's called a string skip, we're going to miss the A string, we're
going to go straight up to the D string and play the same thing; 1,1,3,3. Then we're going
to drop down a string to the string we didn't play, which was our A string, do the same
thing; 1,1,3,3. And then of course to finish it we're going to jump a string, which is
the D string jump and we're going to finish on the G string. So slowly we get
Now what this exercise allows you to do, 1st of all it gets you doing a constant alternate
plucking rhythm in your plucking hand; 1,2,1,2, in plucking hand. As a bass player having
alternate plucking probably one of the most important skills to have, it allows you to
play any bass with consistancey and you don't get any notes jumping in and out, so this
is a really good exercise for that. So what we're going to be doing in the plucking hand
is obviously just 1,2,1,2 but where it becomes tricky is that you have to skip the string,
so we go on the E string 1,2,1,2 jump a string to the D 1,2,1,2 drop down to the A 1,2,1,2
then jump over the D to the G 1,2,1,2 so we go 1,2,3,4.
[music]
And at that point you can just look away and what it allows you to do as well is get used
to skipping strings without looking at your hands as a beginner that can be really difficult
sometimes but, with this sort of exercise, you can get used to what that feels like to
actually skip a string. So if you're going on a rock gig or a punk gig or anything that
requires actually a lot of physical bass playing this is definitely the exercise to help with that.