hey steve , just wondering

[Frank the tank]

hey man i was just wondering , as a bassist at your level, what do you do/practice day to day and how do you start out, what do you continually seek to play. basically what im asking is what are your methods of practice and what do you usually play? still figure stuff out by ear etc?

i always start off with chromatic excercises, then raise the speed, then i usually have a couple of "warm up songs" that usually vary,i had like story to tell, masterof puppets, paranoid, etc , before i hit the books or turn on the stereo, so i was wondering what your methods are and if you got any suggestions

 

[Travis]

Yeah, this is actually something I'd also be very curious to know.

 

[Salvatore]

I'm sure Steve practices this playing method daily.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMStgdgsOhU

 

[Miguel Suerte]

He's wrote this awhile ago and it's on his website. It probably doesn't answer you question fully, but it provides some good insight into what SDG did as practice in the early years.

http://www.stevedigiorgio.com/bin/column.pdf

 

[Nothinggod]

This is a pretty interesting topic. What do the rest of you do for practice, I wonder? Anyone want to share?

 

[Frank the tank]

aside from the warm up excercises and songs i usually just try to figure out stuff from my cd collection or look for tabs that are ridiculously hard to play. latley ive been at the keyboard a little bit too though

 

[Nothinggod]

I read in your original post that you do 'chromatic' excercises. Can you give me an example?

 

[Frank the tank]

yeah , just the excercises from the guitar world issue with zakk wylde from july 2004. to warm up. you can start anywhere but i typically start of A ( 5th fret) and then go to A# B C then move down a string to D D# E etc or just do runs up and down the entire neck like that, try it at at about 100 to 120 bpm for a little while and you should be pretty warmed up and ready to play

 

[HippieOfDoom]

I'm just going to let you guys run with this one. You're not going to like the answer I would have for this topic...!
SDG

 

[Nothinggod]

Yeah, Hippy I can pretty much guess what you would say. You are pretty busy though and sometimes the last thing you want to do or have time to do is practice, if I am guessing right. My practice regime is far from what I preach to my students and other people too, actually. I have lately been picking it up a bit though.

The main thing with practice, I think, is to remember to practice what you aren't good at more than the things you have already mastered.

A couple of things I have been practicing are scalar 3rds, for example I will play a scale and play arpeggios of the thirds up to the 13th and then descend, and do that as 1/4, 1/8 and 1/16th notes then do it as triplets. I also have been working on tapping triads through two octaves with left and right hands. I adapted an interesting VI V i etude for it based on one of Chris Broderick's excercises. I have been working on a few other miscellaneous etudes here and there. One thing I would like to eventually figure out is how to play a finger style version of a sweep arpeggio on bass. My guess is that there is someone out there that can do it already though. [edit] Actually Dominique DiPiazza pretty much does just that now that I think of it. Only I would want to find a way without the thumb-pick

How was Sydney, by the way? I heard you guys did a walk off after some retard threw a bottle at someone's head.

 

[Occam's Razor]

As for the sweeping, Adam Nitti has cultvated that as well.

 

[Nothinggod]

I just read an interview of Adam Nitti describing his method for sweeping and it's exactly the same as the method I have been working on. Nice to know I have been on the right track at least. [edit] After spending a bit of time on it yesterday I have gotten most of the sweeping technique together. I just have to build up some speed now. One thing I found with it though is that you have to practice it a few different ways depending on which arpeggio you are going to use and coordinate when you are going to go from 'downstroke' to 'upstroke', so to speak.

 

[Nothinggod]

I am wondering if anyone else on this forum, 'sweeps'. In particular I am wondering if they tend to use more left or right hand muting. For example one particular sweep I have been working on is a m7(add11) arpeggio so in say a minor it will go [A,C,E,G,D] and decend [G,E,C,A]. This is on a 4 string bass by the way. I hammeron the A to C and then go to the E using my right hand thumb. What I find is that I need to leave my left hand pinky momentarily on the E string after I play the C to mute, which is tricky because the rest of my hand is playing through the arpeggio. It is still playable though. On the other hand it is almost impossible to mute with my right hand other than maybe to do a wrist or palm mute which to me are too inconsitant and imprecise. Anyone got any thoughts on the matter?

 

[HippieOfDoom]

Sweeping...I love that crap! Maybe one day, when I grow up, I can learn all those neat tricks too.
The term sweeping is used, obviously, to communicate between us (musicians playing in the guitar family) a way of articulating the notes spread out in not only a linear arpeggiated form - low to high and back again, but also connotates the rapid speed at which this is executed. K, but the term sweeping is also received with some trepidation by most because it is associated with most guitar shredders...and upper tier bassists usually, but only most recently.
So I am merely supporting this topic in a micro-topic. Take the word 'sweep' out of it, and you're just actually playing some form (or forms) of arpeggio. If it is drag-picked, tapped, thumbed, fingered...whatever. It's totally cool, it's totally fast sounding, and it really takes some practice beforehand. Which are all impressive.
I dig that this excercise was brought up, I hope you guys expound on it more. I have definitely heard of Nitti, but not totally familiar with his stuff. But on Zero Hour's latest album, Troy Tipton - bassist - shredder, sweeps some bass wizardry and it's fucking awesome. We should all keep exchanging info on this kind of stuff. Ya never know where these little tricks will show up and amaze.
I love this crap...!
SDG

 

[Frank the tank]

ive just tried to copy what my guitarists do since it's pretty rare to hear of a "bass sweep". it can be cumbersome but like anything takes practice and real good dexterity if you want it to actually sound good. since your short two strings obviously though you have to compensate by playing different octaves. for example you can do a d minor playing note d f a d f a and back. actually the speed is the hardest part. nothinggod were you talking about somethin like this?

 

[Nothinggod]

Here are a couple of examples of exercises I have been working on. Figure 1 is an arpeggio based on playing the 3rds of the aeolian scale. The T and I represent notes played with the thumb and index finger, respectively. Figure 2 is two arpeggios played consecutively the first is em7(add11) the second is F#7(add10). If any of you are going to attempt these I would suggest that you practice each arpeggio of figure 2 seperately first, then join them together. Also note that for both exercises I 'loop' or repeat over and over so you have to coordinate the changeover between thumb and finger both up and down. This stuff will take a lot of time so expect to be sitting there for hours playing the same thing if you want to master this kind of thing, and start slow with a metronome and build up speed. Accuracy is the key. I have a long way to go with this stuff myself.

Also that excercise you are talking about is a good one too, Frank. I think with this technique in particular you need to practice it as many different ways as possible as every different phrase or etude will require a slightly different technique.

Have fun

[edit] Also with figure1 when you repeat the phrase ignore the hammeron to the last note. just play the C as a single note and then skip the last A and go back to the A to C hammeron at the start. I hope that makes sense

[edit] After practicing figure2 today I found an alternative way to play the first two notes of the first bar. Rather than play it as a hammeron starting with the thumb, I played the E with the index fnger and the G with the thumb. It made it a bit easier to switch between the two arpeggios too. I would still practice it both ways though and I still default back to the original way to loop the em7(add11) on it's own

 

[Frank the tank]

yeah these excercises look pretty alright i guess. but do you know how to connect more of these together? and if so what degree of the arpeggio can ( or do you prefer actually)? i just started on this myself more. before i didnt really know what to fill so i was doing guitar excercises like i said. though im not to keen on using my thumb, but i do use my pinky quite a bit at times.

 

[Nothinggod]

As far as figure 1 goes, you could take pratically any scale and adapt it to that excercise. All it does is play the tertian intervals in sequence. That is, the 1, 3, 5, 7, 9(2), 11(4) and 13(6) and descend back to the tonic. With figure 2 you could have any number of possibilities. That particualar example is just something I came up with so that I could shift between a minor and a dominant based arpeggio. You will notice that in a scalar sense they are not diatonic based. Basically you could take any two or even more chords and make arpeggios of them. As for how to tie them together it goes along the same lines as how you would tie any give piece of music together. Also, I should point out that I use both of those excercises for my regular finger playing practice.

One last thing; the T and I refer to the thumb and index finger of the right hand, just in case that wasn't clear.

 

[Frank the tank]

oh i got the T and I thing its just that i never really use my thumb much, though i can . i meant connecting them like on a more consistent basis, like one chord ( arpeggio) after another. ill just have to practice at it. but other wise theyre pretty cool. got any more?

 

[Nothinggod]

Yeah Frank, just give me some time and I will see what I can come up with. On the thumb thing though, it's like anything you do, you have to just keep doing it until it becomes familiar.