Handy Guide on Ari’s Key Concepts of Bass Technique

by Ari 13 Apr 2017 11 minute read

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Concepts of Great Bass Techniques


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    Technique!

    Ari’s Key Concepts of Bass Technique

    Conscious • Connected • Coordinated

    Minimize Movement Maximize Relaxation

    Breathe • Think ahead • Practice slowly with a click*

    Keep posture roughly the same when standing and sitting

    Left Hand

    • Keep fingers close to the fretboard
    • Plan fingering to optimize shifts
    • “Feel at home” with common structures (scales, triads etc, music theory on the fretboard)
    • Don’t squeeze the neck – provide counterweight with right arm Thumb is there to guide
    • Don’t kink fingers*
    • Place fingers close to frets*
    • One-finger-per-fret position*

    Right Hand

    • Rest arm comfortably on bass body*
    • Have a plan for your plucking pattern (middle/index alternating)
    • Know your dominant finger
    • Keep fingers close to the strings
    • Make different plucking fingers sound as evenly as possible
    • Pluck toward the bass for bigger tone
    • Find strings without looking
    • Have a plan for thumb placement
    • Don’t kink fingers

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    Bassist, author, educator.

    Groove enthusiast and learning nerd.

    Joined by 15,000+ Bassists

    Your Instructor

    Hi. I'm Ari.

    As a bassist, I have toured/played/recorded with a variety of rock, Jazz, and funk bands, I have worked with some incredible producers (Keith Olsen) and musicians (Paul Hanson, Muriel Anderson) and I toured Brazil with Stu Hamm as a duo.

     

    As a bass teacher, I have taught at London Bass Day, Gerald Veasley’s Bass Boot Camp, SBL, Truefire, notreble… I even ran my own music school for a few years before gigs took me back on the road.

     

    One thing to know about me is that I teach because I am absolutely fascinated with the learning process. And I am obsessed with helping others realize their musical potential.

     

    When I started playing bass, I excelled very quickly because I had an amazing teacher who taught me using a powerful method. This method transformed my playing so quickly that I passed a bunch of high-level university auditions and even tested out of entire classes at university even though I had been playing for only a very short time.

     

    That’s what, many years later turned into one of my books, co-written with Wolf Wein, called “The Pattern System for the Bass Player”. I created entire systems of learning based on some of these ideas and wrote books and created courses together with Wolf. Our bass books have sold over 30,000 copies and garnered rave reviews.

     

    I started teaching online in 2009 and have embraced technology as a powerful learning tool since then, never losing sight of the importance of providing feedback and personalized guidance to learners.

     

    Read more…

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