I'm lookin to get my chops back after not playing bass for a while, at the same time trying to get my brain back to scales in jazz, blues, everything....also I'm looking for some slap exercises to work on too. Do any of you guys have any of this kind of stuff you could hook me up with? Any recomendations on books, etc? or even better, anybody have anything online?? :)

Thanks fellas!
Riff

(yes, thats where the name came from.. :D )

I was just gonna say "Slap your Salami" but that doesn't help too much :flipoff2:

Ask Trampas and Radbassist, they can probably recommend something slightly more helpful than what I've offered :D

I was expecting someone with a out of shape fish!

:D

definately pick up a book with all the basic jazz scales in it. Once you have those down there's no song you can't hang with. I played Jazz (trumpet) for about 13 years and this is the main thing I focused on.

I would be no help unfortuneately.......I can't read music and haven't been able to for 20+ years but luckily, I have a good ear so I can pretty much duplicate anything.........But the slap- I have my own style that gets the job done (its ugly but it works). :D

If I had done scales, like you're going to do, I'd be a lot better off than I am now.

Get a metronome, pick a scale, go for it......When it's clean, speed it up a click or 2 and do it again until its clean...speed it up, etc..You can change the key if you want but the fingering is going to be the same..... Do this with all the scales: Pentatonic, herpicatic, copascetic or what ever they call those scales....

Pretty soon it'll be old hat again...............

Hint: When you turn 35 yrs. old, start playing country!!!



Rad

Just pick the darn thing up and play. Who cares if you can slap or not, I can't. 'course I've been a guitarist for about 10 years or so and all my right hand knows how to do is pick, I'm slowly teaching it to slap, but right now its an ugly ugly sight, and the sound aint much better, so I stick with a pick. For now.

Originally posted by DEnd
Just pick the darn thing up and play. Who cares if you can slap or not, I can't. 'course I've been a guitarist for about 10 years or so and all my right hand knows how to do is pick, I'm slowly teaching it to slap, but right now its an ugly ugly sight, and the sound aint much better, so I stick with a pick. For now.

yeah..thats what i have been doin...i put it down for about 2 years after playing for about 7....so its takin a little while to come back...but im gettin there..i was wonderin about slappin because i never have, but would be interested in learning how too...i can kinda do my own thing, but like you rad, hehe...it ain't pretty.....

Originally posted by riffman
trying to get my brain back to scales in jazz, blues, everything....

Hmmm. Simple then.... for the jazz stuff, drop the 7th accidental. For the blues stuff, lower the 7th, minor the 3rd, and chromaticise. :D

No really... don't expect to play things you've never been able to play yet, until you work on new things. For the stuff you already know how to play, warm yourself up doing exactly whatever it was you did to learn it in the first place, until the chops are smooth again. Then, for scales... work the scale whole-step by whole-step increasingly up the neck until you can reproduce the scale blindfolded in the whole-note transition in all positions. Then you can fly in 7 out of 12 keys. Don't worry about your flatted and sharp keys, most guitarists won't know them either.

Radbassist only knows country.. ;) fawker :flipoff2: Pentatonic, tonic, subtonic, supertonic, dorian, lydian, mixolydian, phrygian, aoelian, subdominant, and dominant.....are "modes" not scales. Fun to play, but in my experience only jazz and classical musicians have studied them.

The most important things for modern electric musicians to know, are what i call the perfect scales. These "perfect intervals" can be extracted from those scales, the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 12th (octave)... and are always the constituants in bar chords. So basically, those 'keen' intervals, plus a 3rd (often flatted) and the 7th (again, often flatted) - make up your Rock n Roll and Blues scales, predominantly.

hint: don't expect to improve dramatically playing AC/DC licks over and over again. :rasta:

hth...

for slap you wanna get the biggest possible calais on the side of your thumb. Practicing slap a lot will also help, chokin the chicken to. Its a similar motion

you probably know all of the web sites, but here is some of the stuff i have used in the past..

vic wooten, of course (http://www.victorwooten.com)
under lessons there is some OK stuff to check out.

bill dickens (http://www.billthebuddhadickens.com)
bill the buddha. in my mind he's possibly the best funk/slap bassist of all time. ive seen him live and its totally unbelievable. different style than the normal crowd- wooten/bromberg/manring/bailey

got jaco?
more inspiration, but some of these books are great too.
jaco (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0634017527/qid=1051580445/sr=8-5/ref=sr_8_5/103-3648979-0195063?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)
more jaco (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0634017675/qid=1051580445/sr=8-6/ref=sr_8_6/103-3648979-0195063?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)

of course these are great
vic 1 (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1575604132/qid=1051580530/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-3648979-0195063?v=glance&s=books)
vic 2 (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0769226639/qid=1051580530/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-3648979-0195063?v=glance&s=books)

this one is good too
vic/beauford (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006LRT2/qid=1051580586/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-3648979-0195063?v=glance&s=dvd)

BOO!! They blocked Victor Wooten's site here at work...that sucks....ill take a look at that stuff...thanks induff...

ztec...if wackin really worked, then i would be a pro by now! :flipoff2:

trampas...thanks for the headache!! :) seriously...im gonna get my old lady (french horn player in local "minor league" symphony orchestra) to translate what you said...then im gonna do it...lol. But what you said about the 1st 4th 5th and 12th...its kind of how i play anyway...up untill this point, since i got motivated, i used to riff around geometricly without really knowing the notes i was playing and why they working with it and stuff....so thats actually my foundation on accident...lol..go figure huh...

what do you guys like to do to get your chops warmed up before you start playing?...ztec..i know your answer....lol

warming up is a ritual man :) i warm up for at least 20min before i play.

i start by stretching my forearms. then i grab each finger and pull back to stretch a little more.

i play a major scale all the way up to the 12th fret and back, on each string. then i take a piece of rope about 1/2" thick and put it under the strings, and slide it to around the 12th fret. with the fretting hand i finger scales for about 5min at the 4th fret, let my right hand rest.

after that i proceed to screw around for a few minutes playing whatever i feel like at the time.

after that i take a drumstick in each hand and swing them around to loosen up the wrist.

then i play :)

wow...thats pretty extensive...the only thing i do is start with my first finger on the 12th fret...then each finger after that goes up 1/2 step till the pinky, then the same thing on the next string, then the next, then the next...from there, i do that backwords back down to the E octave...from there i move down to the 11th fret...and keep going on the same pattern untill i get all the way down to starting with an open E....it helps get my fingers going since the frets get wider and wider....when i did that when i first picked up the bass after a while....it BURNED!! lol...mega pain!:D

The only thing i do to warm up before i play is fly around the neck as fast as i can, playing whatever. It limbers up my picking hand and doesn't really matter what the hammer hand is doing, it just falls into place when your doing a piece. I play 'rapido licks' to warm up because when i want to show off, i want to be ready for it, lol.. :D

The 1st 4th 5th and octave are known as perfect intervals because they are identical when you invert them (play them backwards).... and exist in virtually almost every scale in the universe, less a few severely dissonant chants.

You should definately know what an interval is... all notes in a scale are intervals, and ALL intervals are of a relationship to the keynote. The 4th is 5 half-steps from the tonic, the 5th is five half-steps from the octave, etc.. Without knowing that a minor 3rd is a minor 3rd, you'll be troubled to understand / and hear / how to make your own riff, on the fly. Playing for me is a one-dimensional idiom.... if i can't do it live and on stage, i'll bore you to tears... :( So knowing how to "riff within a scale" at the drop of a dime, is very important to me.

I fuckin' love jammin' the drummer into cardiac arrest, sometimes.. :rasta: