This week I’ll be looking a little closer at the bass octave pattern and how we can use it to develop minimal movement in our fretting hand technique.
Octaves
Octaves are a common feature in funk and disco bass lines and can double up as a great exercise for perfecting our bass technique. We can put our playing under the musical microscope with this exercise to develop better independance between the fingers and clean up our technique through using minimal movemnt.
Here is the riff we will be using:
Things To Practise:
- Alternate picking
- ‘See-sawing’ (Bouncing between fingers to make the changeover between notes as smooth as possible)
- Note durations
- Left hand positioning
Note Durations
1. Long Long
2. Short Short
3. Long Short
4. Short Long
Everyone has their own physical limitations.I have quite large hands and long fingers but to put my fingers in the positions shown here puts way too much stain on my thumb and wrist.In order for me to play an octave with my little finger,I have to move either my thump or other fingers.Otherwise I risk injury.Same with playing a scale.Can’t do it with my thumb in 1 position but must slide some because I can’t get my fingers to stretch apart far enough.I haven’t found this to hinder my playing for I can play as clean and fast as I want to.
In the videos about octaves it’s always played starting from the first finger. And what if i play a bass line with alternate plucking and the coming up finger is the second one? It is a really uncomfortable to play an octave starting from the second finger.