Geoff: Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of "Ask Geoff and Lauren."
We're here to answer your questions about the double bass.
And it's actually nighttime in Australia where Lauren is and it's first thing in the morning
over here.
So you know, Lauren's gonna be in the dark, I'm gonna be in the day, you know, the light,
but we'll try and make it work.
And our first question is from Ricardo.
So he's been playing bass about 20 years, electric and upright, and he's got the basics
of theory but he's essentially struggling to...to sight-read and he'd like to remedy
that.
So what are your suggestions to approach this?
And that's Richard actually.
So, Richard, I think first of all if you're learning to sight read, one of the things
that I've seen really help people is to understand...so look at rhythm and notations and notes, pitches
separately.
So really work on your rhythm, and there's lots of kind of apps online where you can
tap along with rhythms, practice counting them out and clapping.
It's just start with, you know, crotchets and quavers, quarter notes and eight notes.
And just really look at all the different divisions, learn to clap on the end of four,
learn to clap on all the different places that you can do.
And work on your rhythm that way, and then try and put that together with where the notes
are on the instrument.
So you need to know your fingerboard to know where the notes are that you able to play
them, and then you need to know what that looks like on the page.
And a really good thing to work on is if you're into a jazz bass, practice walking bass lines
because they're generally rhythmically really static, they're generally four quarter notes
in a bar.
As simple as you're gonna get really or even two notes in a bar, and just practice.
So there you're just focusing not on rhythm, but on the notes and that, you know, getting
your brain thinking about what the sea looks like on the stave, how you play that on the
double bass.
And it's a little bit more fun, you know, than maybe some other things.
And then as you move forward, then start adding in more rhythmically diverse music as well.
So I think that really helped me and if you're playing bass guitar, there's a good book as
well by Josquin des Pres called "Simplified Sight-Reading for Bass Guitar" and I believe
it would work for [inaudible 00:02:30] I don't see why not.
It's really takes that concept of working on the rhythm separately and you know, it's
a really long established thing, jazz bass players often use a Louis Bellson drum book
called something like "Sight-Reading Studies in 4/4."
And I've seen that, you know, musicology is a lot.
That's one of the kind of key texts that people use to practice rhythm but nowadays there
are all sorts of apps online for free that you can clap along with the rhythms by pressing
the space bar and what have you.
And lastly, try to practice looking ahead in the music.
Try to not get just too focused on what you're doing.
Try to work whatever you're doing on looking ahead to give yourself space.
So Lauren, what about you?
I've answered that one in just a particular way, but how would you have gone about approaching,
any tips for sight reading especially for beginners?
Lauren: Yeah.
I mean I think that there are two different levels to this question.
I think everything you said is absolutely true.
I really love all of the suggestions that you gave.
Especially separating it between the pitches and the rhythm, I think that's...rhythm tends
to be everybody's problem area, you know, they learn the notes and then rhythm is a
whole different ballgame.
So definitely separate that too, but...
Geoff: One thing with rhythm as well that's just so important, you're probably getting
there, but like one of the most common mistakes that I see people make is that they either
cut long notes short or they don't actually leave the time for the rest.
So they'll play a long note and then they sort of play the pickup note into the next
thing.
Really practice recording yourself and filming yourself and listening back because rhythm
is really hard to be subjective about when you're doing it, when you're learning particularly.
I find that when I listen back to myself, I get a much clearer picture of rhythm.
With pitches, I kind of pretty much know they're either right or wrong.
It's the right note or not, but with rhythm, it's really hard to evaluate yourself.
Sorry, Lauren, for jumping in there.
Lauren: I think you're right.
Yeah, no, no.
I absolutely agree with you and that was something that I wasn't even considering, but that's
so true with rhythm.
It's always the long notes and it's always the rest, but when you're auditioning for
anything especially if there's anybody out there that's auditioning for like All-State
Honor Orchestra, that's what they look for.
As soon as you start playing, they start going like this, you know, tapping the rhythm.
And they're looking for the notes that you're cutting off or rests you're cutting off.
But in terms of learning to read music, I think the two different levels are learning
to read music and then also learning to sight-read.
And I think that they're similar but they're not exactly the same thing.
When you're learning to read music, something I tell my students when they're learning to
read a new clef, is pick the notes that you know you can recognize.
So in tenor clef, everybody hates tenor clef, but in tenor clef what I did when I was starting
to learn to read it was I recognized where the D was on the staff and that's the top
space.
And I learned that and then I could remember what the G looked like which is the first
line on the...
Geoff: So you're starting the tryouts.
You're looking at the kind of...
Lauren: Sort of, sort of.
I mean you can't absolutely think about it that way if it helps but I was just...i found
a couple notes that I was like, "Okay, I can remember what those look like" for whatever
reason, memorize those and then kind of put everything together, you know, because that
helps.
Like if you know where D is and there's a note that's a couple notes above that and
you're like I'm not...
Geoff: If we just take this back, so it's more likely Richard's gonna be learning bass
clef for this example so if he learns the G is in the top space, and then, I don't know,
he learns that.
Right.
So...
Lauren: If you set it as a visual, I think for some reason for me I think because I'm
just...am such a visual person, there's certain notes that I look at it and I'm like for whatever
reason that just looks like what it looks like on the staff.
I don't know how to describe it, but if you can find those, yeah, if you can find those,
then it'll really really help you both in the moment and just overall learning the clef
or whatever it is.
But then also in terms of sight reading, I think the thing that helped me both with rhythm
and with pitches was learning to recognize patterns.
I mean there's only so many patterns that you can...that you're gonna see in music.
And of course, there's, you know, thousands.
I'm like really underestimating it, but you'll recognize what those patterns are.
And for me, the issue was the fingerings.
Like figuring out what the fingerings we're gonna be for certain note groupings.
But if you can recognize these patterns, you can get through it and the fingers aren't
gonna be an issue.
That's what trips a lot of us up.
So.
Geoff: This is the same rhythmically and it's the same in terms of pitch as well because
you'll start to recognize arpeggios, you'll recognize your musical patterns, you know,
when you're playing rhythms now you get to the point where you don't really think about
it because you've seen the pattern so much more.
And I think the key thing is that when people start out, there reading note to note to note
to note, rhythmical value to the next one to the next one.
And what we're doing as we get more experience, is that we're recognizing groups and patterns,
and chunking it down.
And we'll spot that that's an arpeggio, it's a chromatic run.
And if you see like how many times you see some kind of big long chromatic run down,
and you just look at it really quickly, it's chromatic.
And then you just, you're not thinking almost as you're playing it all, or I'm not, just
playing chromatically down from the top note to the bottom one, you know.
And you'll start to work that out.
And just another quick one for me, Lauren, I don't know if you've got anything else to
finish off with, but I was gonna say just to really get a wide variety of music.
And you know, Google image is your friend, find a load of sheet music online.
There's absolutely tons of it.
Find music that you enjoy playing that's straightforward and simple, quarter notes and eighth notes
at the start.
Just keep it simple and work through as much new stuff as you can.
And yeah, practice sight reading and then practice, you know, where you'll just be focusing
on keeping going.
And then maybe work through it slower as well and learn some stuff and...
Any last thoughts to finish off?
Lauren: No.
I think you covered all of it, honestly.
Geoff: You know, it's been really funny today, Lauren, because we're getting darker as we've
been speaking and this is like the haunted episode.
And the problem was is that we met up earlier and I've just been on a bit of a mission about
something so I was chatting to Lauren for too long beforehand.
Lauren: We always chat for like at least two hours and then we start.
Geoff: Yeah.
I know we just...
Lauren: But we've never had this time difference before, so.
Geoff: Yeah, we're gonna have to figure this out.
But yeah, thanks for sticking with us.
And of course thanks, Richard, for your question.
If anyone else wants to join in, maybe point to some books and you know, resources that
will help him with sight reading, we'd love to hear about that.
So shout-out below and we'll see you next time.