Bass Case S2 E33: “Practicing Foundations” (Part 1)

I'm starting this series on practicing foundations because it keeps coming up with my studio

bass players.

These are students who are good players but still new to music school ways and they need

direction in their practicing amongst other things.

I was working with one of the basses on his orchestra material and we took it down to

60 on the metronome and we worked out fingering since shifts on the double bass over divorce

acts since 6th symphony and I left it at 60 and he asked can we raise the tempo and I

said no, we're working things out and you have them worked out likely later in your

personal practice, double the tempo.

If you practice it correctly at 60, note when I say correctly it means you worked out

the fingering, the bowings and shifts, whatever you can play it down at 60, it will likely

be there at 120.

Slow is good, slower is even better.

Anyway I have an episode on 60 from over a year ago, check it out but the other practice

foundation that came up with is the sequence of keys we should practice in.

We should always be practicing in all 12 keys, scales, licks, melodies, lines, arpeggios,

scale fragments.

Jazz players are taught to work things out in force.

So working out major scales for instance to the jazz cycle as they call it when I was

in school I would start with C and then proceed to F, then Bb, Eb, Ab, Dbg, and so on and

so forth.

And it's effective, there's no complaints against force because force are natural to the

ear because most progressions move in force, 2, 5, 1 moves in force, C minor to F7 to Bb

major that's moving in force.

To tune autumn leaves it's totally in force, blue bosses in force, a blues utilizes

forts, pop tunes, church stuff, contemporary Christian music, forts.

So it makes sense to me hourly, you know using my ears to move scales, arpeggios, licks,

et cetera, in force and it trains your ear to hear force and it's highly effective.

And it also takes you to well use keys this way.

So if I'm starting at C then I go to F which is, I can't think of how many temps that

are in F and then you go to Bb, then you go to Ebb and those are particular favorites

of jazz standards.

So move it around, in my studio the bassists have the scale of the month.

And this year starting in January I started going through FIFS, a lot of classical instructors

use FIFS, they're highly effective too, start with C then you go G, D, A, E, B and so

on.

It makes you go through the sharp keys first, it's good for you.

Make your ear think differently too, you're going through FIFS instead of force, that's

fine.

Do that, chromatically, I like this, I use this when I'm warming up, especially on electric

bass, chromatically ascending.

So I go C, D, flat, D, E, flat, E, F, G, flat, G and so on.

It takes you, it phases you in and out of keys that you favor or your instrument favors

and through keys you might try to avoid but it does so in a hopscotch fashion.

You start with a familiar key C and then you go to D, flat, not a real bass friendly

key and then you go to D which feels a lot better, E, flat, not a bad key for bass players.

You start moving through and then you get to G, flat, not so friendly, right?

Chromatic descending, now this really makes you really think about it, think about it.

See again, good key for bass players, B major, okay, B flat major, familiar territory

for basses, A major, I'm just going down chromatically, A major, not a bad key for basses,

A flat major, not a favorite for bass players, G major, good key, I would call it an open

string city, yet another way, right?

One more, random roots, Antoine Schwartz was promoting this, he's a tenor saxophone

from the west coast, he created a sheet for it that I ran into, it really plays with

the ears but it makes you think.

If you can't find Antoine's sheet online email me and the key to this is that you want

to hit all keys, so you start, I think he starts with C and then F which makes sense and

then he goes to B natural and the keys are randomized all over the sheet so you do one

line of them like that, this is very effective too, all the methods are in one way or the

other but it's a good way to nail down and structure your practicing because we want

to play in all keys and one method or the other at some point in all.

If you have questions email me at filletbasecase.co, I'll talk to you soon.