Guys, do you have any daily routine for practicing your basslines ?

Or do you usually just jam your basslines in the songwriting process of a song?

I would like to get better at it and this is the only area that I am clueless about
how I can practice it.

 

I usually load some random Stylus RMX rhythm and jam along with MODO, but that's prolly my dipshit, keyboard "playing liek bass"

Spoiler

playing nothing liek bass ;_____;

Also recd mind-opening vid by Victor Wooten. Also mind-opening because he jams with Colin Jost!

 

Last edited: Aug 18, 2020

Oh Jesus, there're sooo many ways to practice. For instance:

- scales, up and down, major, minor and half tone steps, every note 1x, 2x, 3x, 3x basic tempo 1x double tempo. Starting at every fret of the lowest string.
- chords, single notes for minor and major, same way as mentioned above.

And this is just the basic stuff that keeps you busy for years.

 

And then there's practicing tone, via playing position and fingering.
Maybe more important, depending on music style.

 

To a clicktrack or your daw metronome.
After 30+ years of playing keys, I can be dead on it (or sometimes 3 or 4 ticks out @ 960 PPQN) and now can actually deliberately push or pull as well.
It's the most useful practice, in my opinion.
Also, I can recommend just playing along to whatever comes on the radio/spotify/whatever.
Great for ear training as well as theory.

 

Ahhh my beginner days were so long ago. I remember doing a finger coordination exercise with just your fingers. Tap all your finger tips to your thump tip in sequence index, middle, ring then pinky finger back & forth. then with both hands start one hand on the index finger then on the other hand start with your pinky. Then you can really make it interesting by doing the index to ring finger middle to pinky then do opposites on both hands.
Strength is also very important. Use hand grips & ball up newspaper with one hand with your palm facing upwards.
I got so crazy with the hand grips that my forearms started looking like Popeye!

 

My 'horizontal' advice from hangin' with great bass players would be to learn tunes like Stevie Wonder and keys drivin bass like Chaka Kahn. Go through Bach cello etude transcripions. Learn the art of improvising walking bass lines while reading chord charts. You can either "mow the grass vertically or horizontally". I prefer 'diagonally'.

 

In addition to all the good advice above about practicing.
One of the best things you can do is to move beyond practicing and start performing.
If you can actually be gigging then that's the best, but if that's not available then just pretend you're gigging.
So, take your 10 favourite songs, and play them back to back no stopping.
In a gig you won't have any second chances, you just keep going no matter how many bum notes you played.
So simulate that exact experience. Perform the whole set non stop.
After few weeks of doing that, your mind set will have changed forever.
Then just keep on adding new favourite songs to your list.
Depending on what stuff you're into you might be able to find 'bassless' backing tracks to perform with.

 

@Ad Heesive
That's so funny. I wrote a similar comment earlier but then retracted it!
Mine involved my second comment about playing to whatever comes on the radio, but also treating it like a gig in front of 1000s, and covering for hesitation!
The problem in 'gigging' for me was that I was on the road from 18 and never had the time to practice truly.
So apart from knowing the set back to front, my basics were terrible! Learnt a lot of other priceless truths though. Just not related to progressing with my instrument.
It wasn't until I was 23 that I could in a sense 'go back' and carry on learning, although the bad habits that had become deep-rooted had to be weeded out!
So, re your 'gigging' advice, I'm like nnyeah, half yes, half no!

 

I agree with your cautions, but that's why I carefully started my comment with
"In addition to... all the good advice about practicing".
I also think that 'only practicing' without performing (with or without audience) is a bad habit all by itself.
Cheers.

 

Hi
First of all, it would be good to precise if your are speaking about playing a bass or practicing how to write bass lines with a synth.
To practice bass, there are different ways but one I like is to find one or to songs where bass lines are just above your level and study them , practice them until you are able to to play them comfortably.

Also learning ways of thinking about bass lines is important. Studying a bass line you like by understanding what is its relation with the drum, the main melody and the chords can help a lot.

There is a post here , in the bass section of the site which points at different YouTube channels for bass lessons:
https://audiosex.pro/threads/interesting-channels-for-bass-lessons.34022/

If you are speaking about composing synth bass lines, then I can only repeat this : Studying a bass line you like by understanding what is its relation with the drum, the main melody and the chords can help a lot.

 

Most of what is suggested above is correct and useful.
If you want additional suggestions, use the gift of Internet searching. I used your own words in youtube.
PAGES come up, all mostly relevant, many free and some probably want money, but all offer useful ideas in one way or another, whether 15 minute or hourly ideas. You will have to sift through some but it's not short on ideas.


https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=daily+bass+practice+routines

 

This guy has some very good points and thoughts about praticing
altho he is all about the jazzguitar, you can still apply it to your bass practicing.

 

Kind souls in this forum, thank you to all of you that took the time to respond to me. Much love.

And btw I am talking about synth bass for House(Kaytranada type of Basslines), Funky House G-Funk, Hip Hop, Rnb , I do not own a bass ( in the plans for next year).

Yeah I did some research on my own. I just wanted more direct information from other people.

And most videos are about physical bass guitar, i am leading towards synth bass material of course (I didn't mention it my fault on this one haha ).

But I guess I can take a look and see how I can translate this to synth bass.

Merci Olymoon. Je parlais plus pour Synth Bass. Et ouais, je comrpends pas mal ce qui est de creer une bassline par rapport aux chords que t'as et ton drum pattern, melanger les "chord tones" la tonic et la fifth et le third avec des non-chord tones, je pense que j'overthink un peu trop lol.

Je devrais simplement juste jam sur des drums loops et chords loop chaque jours et m'avancer de la sorte.

Great Advice, thank you !! I have a Melodic subscriptions as well I am about to use more now for Bass.

 

Aaah, so now that you've revealed your synth bass goals...

I'll assume that you're using a keyboard to play bass lines (or composing bass lines in your DAW)
When using keyboards for bass. there can still be lots of useful insights from seeing how a bass guitar player thinks.

I'm NOT suggesting that emulating bass guitar player techniques should be a goal, just that it can be useful to think about.

Also, obviously not suggesting that emulating bass guitar sounds should be goal,
but again, interesting to see how a bass guitar player thinks about bass sounds.

Here's a nice video that demonstrates some of the above. (sure to be many other videos out there in this vein)
Bass Fingers (Waves Instrument plugin)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0SuRmL-FXo

 

I bass crack when i have the time for it.
Just kidding
Real "routine for practicing your basslines" is practice the hell out everything you know and try it
When someone says "it's not this or that" try harder.
The trick to become any form of artist is to know youself.
Face yourself in the mirror and accept what you are.
Then practice is an non issue.
Music is about self acceptance and throwing it into the world.
If someone don't like your music, then ask why.
If they ignore you, you know you are on the good path.
Here is an example

 

I am confident that you can search using synth bass parameters and probably get a large amount of useful ideas (and some not so much).

 

@Donald Glover Aha!
Sequenced Synth bass in House etc?
= Note Length! V important factor.

 

it all depends where you want to go with it. some genre's you don't ever have to practice ever

On a serious note though, look at the amount of practice you put in to learn how to stand upright, walk and coordinate your body movement or to learn speech and be able to express yourself ..... a lot!!! So the more practice the better to get both your hands co-ordinated. It helps to have your instrument properly set -up .... although a poorly set-up instrument can actually be useful too for practicing. Whatever, you do, do lots of it until you feel you can express yourself effortlessly without having to think about it. Thinking is the enemy .... and anyone that tells you any different doesn't know what they're talking about. It should be thought-free and effortless .... as this frees up brain resources to get on with playing. Scales, etc are great for co-ordination. There's plenty of tab out there. Or you can go old school and use your ears and learn from recordings you like ... start simple and build up your abilities by learning harder and harder pieces. As regards timing ... DON'T play like a metronome, like you've beenb quantised .... in a band situation it sounds terrible. Play with feel, this may involve a bit of of dancing in and out with the beat. Oh, if you get stuck playing the same old crap all the time, use an altered tuning ... then you can play the same old crap and it sounds different, or you can use it to learn new moves. Hope this helps. And good luck

 

Oh, and also learn to sing while you play. Not only will this teach you how to multi-task, but will also help you stand out from the crowd when it comes to getting gigs.