Learn Metal Bass w/ David Ellefson DVD #2

[Music] hi I'm David Ellison and welcome to the Rockhouse method level 2 program for playing metal bass guitar you know I've been a metal fan my whole life and as a result I've been passionate about learning to play metal as a musical form and as a metal bassist in this program we're gonna get into some of the more advanced techniques that you'll need to know if you want to become a much more proficient metal bass guitarist I also want to let you know about something else that's really cool with this program that you get a free online lesson support just go to the program's main menu to find out how to register for your free membership at Rock house method comm for now let's strap on the bass and let's go play some metal now I want to teach you how to read tablature or tab as it's commonly called tablature is a numbering system for reading notes on the neck of a guitar or bass it does not require you to have any knowledge of standard music notation and this system was designed specifically for guitar and bass what you're looking at right now is a bar of tablature you'll see four horizontal lines and those represent the strings on your bass the top line is going to represent your g string which is the smallest string the one below that is your D string below that is your a string and beneath that is your E string the biggest string you're also gonna see some numbers on the strings these correspond to the frets that you're going to be playing on with your left hand so for example you'll see a zero that would mean not to play any frets at all that's an open string when you see a three that means with your left hand you're gonna play the third fret on the E string because that's where the three is the next string up you're gonna see a two and that's your a string that means you're going to play on the second fret of your a string and then above that you're gonna see the D string has a two also so you're going to take your finger off the a string and place it on the D string and play on the second fret now you may notice these little numbers underneath the numbers that are on the strings and these correspond to your left-hand fingers that should be playing these notes on the frets the little number one corresponds to your index finger number two is your second finger number three obviously is your third finger and four would be your pinky this just helps you play when you're trying to work out positions because a lot of times you're gonna run into things that are complicated or seem like you don't have enough fingers to play so this will help you out all right before we get into doing some playing here let's make sure we're in tune with each other so I'm gonna play across each one of the four strings on the bass guitar so that you can take a moment to tune your instrument first we'll start with the g-string [Music] now we'll go to the d-string let's go to the a string and finally the e-string [Music] this is a standard a-440 tuning and I want to point out that you can go to the website to download a tuner there as well just to make sure that everyday you stay in tune throughout the program let's get going okay to kick things off here I want to go through a few warm-up exercises these are things that you can do at home they're things that you can work on if you're sitting backstage at a show there's certainly things that I work on and there even some things that you can do without even having a bass in your hand just sort of some nice left hand and right hand warm-up exercises and also before we get rolling I want to point out that you should always try to play as much of your stuff practicing and especially these exercises when possible with a metronome or with the drum machine and there is a metronome available on the Rockhouse website that you can download that you can have at your convenience so to get started let's put our left hand in the first position on the bass neck and what we're going to do is we're going to use one finger per fret and we're gonna work our way across the neck we're gonna shift up and work our way back down and this is an exercise that you can just keep working in that fashion all the way across and this is what it'll sound like [Music] the new the ship as we started to go back down [Music] and then you can shift and go up and go back across like what and then you can do that all the way up and down the neck and important that you get up on the tips of the fingers too when you do that don't let your hand down and you're kind of lazy and use the the fatty part of your finger make sure you get up on the tip to get some real good clarity now real quick I want to talk to about what we're doing with our picking ham as you see I have a pic in my hand some people choose to use their fingers which we usually prefer to do a one and two finger approach in this particular case you can work as I just did using all down picking but you can also do another method where you alternate the picking like this you're going down [Music] [Applause] [Music] etc if you're going to be using your fingers the method to do this would be to alternate between the 1 and the 2 finger like this [Music] so 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 etc out of the several exercises that I like to use this is another one that's very good for learning to stretch out the hand and it what this essentially what we're gonna do is we're gonna work across I'm going to show it to you because it's almost easier to demonstrate than it is to talk about but we're gonna go across with one and two fingers we're gonna come down with three and two fingers and then we're going to go back up with fingers three and four and it'll sound something like this now switch to three and two now going back up with 3 & 4 now we can move the whole thing up to the to the 5th fret and work our way back down using the 2 and the 1 now we're going to go back across using the 2 and the 3 and come back down using the 3 & 4 now with this exercise but the what you're gonna do with your picking hand is again you can just do all down picking like I did or you can alternate the picking such as this down down down down and if you're going to be using your fingers again you want to use the one and two fingers for this technique and you'd want to be alternating using the one two one two one two one two one two one two if you want to try this at a faster speed it'll sound something like this [Music] [Music] again all the while using the metronome one final thing that I do want to talk about these exercises are designed to really get your strength built up in your hand and there's a common myth that you should be squeezing a ball or using Fitness exercise equipment in order to continually squeeze your hand while you're not playing your instrument I must warn you that this is a myth and a lot of guitar stores will have balls and certain mechanisms set up that they're trying to sell you at the cash register now to take anything away from their profits but as a musician you must be aware that all you're doing is squeezing your hand all the time every time your hand is on the neck so it's important as I found out when I actually got into some a little bit of some hand injury trouble with that it's important that you also work with your hand to move it out and it even feels good it's actually kind of relaxing and feels nice on the hand to stretch it this way I also recommend even wrapping a rubber band around your thumb and your fingers to help exercise it this way this way you're stretching against so as you're spending the day playing squeezing this way on the neck you're now also able to stretch the muscles the other way as well this will help prevent injury and also provide some good relaxation and some stretching comfort for you too in level 1 I introduced both the major and the minor scales on the electric bass and when that what we did is we work across the neck and as much as that's an important concept now what I want to do is introduce you to an exercise where you can move both the major and the minor scales up the neck now the fun thing about this and this makes something as mundane and almost seemingly boring is playing a scale start to become interesting here's what I want you to do is move up the neck one octave in one using one fingering and work down the neck using a different fingering and these combinations can go on and it's something that you really have a lot of fun with so let's start with a C major scale moving up the neck one way and coming down the other and it should sound something like this [Music] now we can do the same thing using the minor scale going up one way and coming down with a different fingering it should sound something like this [Music] one of the things that I like to do with that is on any particular string not do more than one shift just like I did with the minor scale there I did the shift right here now coming back down down I did the shift right there so it's fun with that is that you start to learn the fingerboard and you really start to understand where the notes lie that are right underneath your finger and if you really wanted to take this experiment to the next level try doing it in two octaves [Music] [Music] okay I want to talk a little bit about a traditional metal bass sound and a traditional metal base concept of the how the line works underneath of the guitar what I was just playing is something that keep continues a nice throbbing consistent solid foundation for the track so even though the guitars are moving chords over top what gives it a distinctive metal sound is that the bass is just in this case writing eighth notes underneath so on our picking hand where all we're doing is we're just playing eighth notes [Music] and it's just nice and solid if you want you can incorporate some of the muting technique a little bit with you if you want with that the actual notes that I'm playing on this particular one it's starting with an open a and if you want you can even play a closed a which would be on the fifth fret on the e-string but for these purposes I kind of like to play an open string it kind of opens the sound of the bass up a little bit so I'm playing an A then I'm not moving until the AB and do cg and then the risk starts all over again she wants you to give this one a try and see how it sounds if you keep pay attention to how solid it sounds even when the guitar is moving over top [Music] [Music] those eighth notes Robin the whole time through it [Music] [Music] [Music] another cool thing to pay attention to if you download that off of the site and you use that as just sort of a template for you to jam over make use of where you're listening to the drums as well you can always listen to the kick drum which lands on the 1 and the 3 or you can listen to the backbeat which is the snare drum which lands on 2 & 4 so have fun with that one ok now that we've talked about playing eighth notes let's talk about the use of sixteenth notes again the eighth note while it's counted one and two and three and four and a sixteenth note is is twice as many which is one E and a two E and A three E and a four E and them I put together a little line here that has a bit of a syncopated thing meaning that you're not going to just hammer all the way through playing sixteenth notes as you would in this type of a line in this particular line we're gonna leave some notes out and it's very important to music especially when you're writing something so oftentimes it's what you don't play that's just as important as what you do play now with syncopated sixteenths one of the things that I found as a bass player is that you don't always have to play exactly what the guitar is playing you'll find that that sometimes playing half as much instead of instead of hammering the which is a sixteenth note passage you can play eighth notes and what that does is it creates the illusion that you're playing the exact same thing is the guitar but because you're hitting the string you're striking it less you're actually giving the string enough time to for its long waveforms to come out and you're actually letting the sound of the bass note develop so it's a bit of an illusion that you can use and and play less and the instrument actually is a more functional instrument in that position we're going to play a track right now and I'm going to play along with this that just to demonstrate a little bit about what I'm talking about here these are sixteenth notes [Music] now I'm gonna go to eighth note [Music] I'll go back to the sixteenth so that's a different way for you to use some different techniques to be able to create a little bit of a different sound and still be able to keep the bass in its primary role as creating a foundation for the riff and for the sound of a metal band [Music] there's a lot of different things you can do with the bass guitar that will actually help it step out into the front of the stage instead of always being in the background there's a good for an example is what I was just playing where you can use a pedal tone which is where you keep a note ringing underneath while you're playing a riff over top of it also another technique that I was incorporating is what's called the hammer on so far what we've been playing we've been as we've been as we've been hitting the note we hit it directly on the beat but with a hammer on what you do is you actually hammer up to the note you actually you're fingering one note in this case with your first finger and then actually hammering down the next note with your third finger [Music] all the while we're keeping the pedal tone going underneath with the a-string even while jumping over other strings there's one of the most famous baselines we've heard of that is they're all Smith's sweet emotion which incorporates a lot of that type of movement where there's this nice sort of cloudy real dreamy sort of ethereal bass tone going on and this part that's that's operating underneath of what the guitars are doing so here play along with me on this and try it and Pavin it come up with some wines of your own where you're using a pedal tone with one note ringing out and then you have another line going over top play along with this you would see what you can do with this so let me show you the notes that I'm playing on this that you can follow along I'm hammering from the G up to the a which is the fifth fret to the seventh fret on on the D string then I'm moving up and I'm going from the tenth fret to the twelfth fret on the D string [Music] then I'm hammering from the twelfth fret up to the 14th fret on the d-string and then I actually jump up to the g string and also do a 12 and 14 hammer and then I work it back down again so I'm basically playing the passage up and I'm playing the exact same thing coming down well play along and see what see what you come up with and do some experimenting with your own on this one [Music] [Music] again there's many combinations that you can do moving to the different strings and trying different pedal tones and different versions of hammer ons and rifts but there's some cool things you can create and come up with with your bass on that that'll help you step out and actually be a bit more of a melody instrument so have fun with that one in metal based level one I introduced the concept of using the gallop as one of the grooves it's very popular in metal again it's something that groups like Iron Maiden especially Iron Maiden but also groups like Black Sabbath and many others over the years have used and it's a very very powerful undertow and a pulse even if the guitars are moving other riffs over top of it it's something that works out real well I've created a little line here that works well and just really kind of just riding on the on the E string and then a half way through will do a modulation up to an F sharp which those two are very popular heavy metal keys to play them so essentially a gallop sounds something like this [Music] and it's a use of an eighth-note pattern but not in a straight eighth note pattern that we talked about earlier so this is something again that that if you just kind of sit comfortably with the drums and really just lay back into the pocket of it and you can even listen to the to keep from getting too far on top of the beat which is something that a lot of rock players do we tend to you know we get anxious and we're all pumped up and regressive we tend to play a little on top of the beat it's easy if you just kind of sit back and you just kind of lay in to where the snare drum is that it's play along with this example [Music] even if the guitars been moving around [Music] [Music] to the f-sharp here one whole step [Music] so again as you go through that particular exercise paying attention to where that snare drum is done better done better them better and that'll really kind of just help you lay back and get a cool groove going while still having that urgency in that pulse which is well part of what that gallop sound creates those of you that have been playing bass for a little while know that most of the time us basses stick to just playing one note at a time that's kind of what the instrument is designed to do is to provide that foundation however the use of chords which isn't always something we want to be playing but he used in the right context especially does an accent or something to double along the line of a guitar in metal can be a very powerful effect so what I want to talk about here is probably the most popular chord and certainly the one that's the most useful is using the root note and then on top of it adding the fifth note of the scale it's known as a one five essentially and it's similar to what in in what you're probably if you're playing in a band a metal guitar player is going to use this type of a chord shape as well and in it for these purposes let's just start right here on the seventh fret of the third string playing an E and then we're going to go up five notes in that scale to five right there okay so then we're gonna be using the five so it's the 1 and the 5 and when you play them together it's very powerful [Music] and if you're so lucky that it was we are right here in E you can even add this me down below so you actually get the octave as well as the five I put together an example that I'd like you to play along with and it will give a very very kind of here the diminished and the very aggressive nature of it the notes that we're going to be playing on this are going to be a one five starting with on the up on the eighth fret widths playing an F and E and an E flat so it's this shape right here the F playing the E and implement b-flat right here and then toward the end of it what I'm going to do is I'm going to separate those notes out and play them as as essentially kind of an arpeggiating thing like [Music] so we can put incorporate the two of them together here play along with me [Music] here's the 1/5 chord shape [Applause] sounds very big and powerful against the [Music] now we can move it [Music] break it up into the arpeggio and you can go back and forth like that and it's a cool thing with cords because you can you can break them apart like that and do the arpeggiating thing and move back and forth with it but again used effectively and even in that example where the guitar is kind of holding this e and you're moving that half-step against it that half-step thing is very indicative of a very powerful metal riff just like bass chords which aren't always used with the bass guitar but are always used with guitar you can use vibrato especially useful if you're doing a solo where you may be wanting to hold a note out but also how about in just using a strain of straight bass line to a riff of a song how about using vibrato then it kind of adds a very cool texture is it kind of wavers against the guitar and if you and your guitar player even do it together it really sounds menacing let's go back to the previous riff rise even using the chords you can even vibrato an entire chord like this [Music] kind of gets a very powerful sound about it and you can even take those chords on there and break them into single notes [Music] you can move it all over the neck you don't want to do it all the time because it'll Biddle you'll sound out a tune and that's one important thing about vibrato you don't want your bending it too far because you'll just you'll just blatantly sound out of tune with your band but if you do shake the know just just a little bit it just adds a little bit of that menace good and gets the teeth out a little bit you know so it really gives that that real true grit to that metal sound as we've been talking about taking the bass at from being just a background rhythm instrument into being more of a melody instrument one of the things that is definitely worth developing is the use of arpeggios and this is something that can help you develop some nice simple melodies sometimes there's some nice simple droning melodies and you can put guitars and different things around it but it definitely brings the bass up to the forefront of the mix and to the part of the BAM what I want to show you here is something using some both minor and major arpeggios now this is in the in the key of a so we're gonna start again kind of having this droning a underneath of it with some chords ringing out over top so here we're gonna put our third finger on the seventh fret on the d-string we're gonna put our first finger up here on the fifth fret of the g string and we're going to pick this is the arpeggio is the a [Music] that's something that is a minor arpeggio now we can move up one fret and add a nice little major arpeggio by playing on the eighth fret on the a-string the seventh fret on the D string and then adding the ninth fret on the g-string so we've moved from the minor arpeggio [Music] essentially what we're really playing goes we're going from an a to an okay now we're gonna move that might that major arpeggio up two frets to a G we're gonna go up here to the tenth fret and the ninth fret on the a and the D string respectively and then we're gonna finish it off [Music] and this last arpeggio which is essentially is another a minor arpeggio what we did is we took this one right here we added it up here because now I know you know the notes on the fingerboard by now because you've been studying right because you downloaded it and you've been looking at it off of the website right we're up here I'm playing this a up here on the 12th fret on the a-string we're gonna play the 10th fret on the D string and then we're also going to add on the 12th fret on the g-string so what we have is something that sounds like this then to polish it off we're going to just come down here to the third fret or you can even add it like this all kinds of nice little combinations you can do like that try playing along with me you may have to study this a little bit to just sort of get some of the shapes but I just want to mow stantly play something for you that kind of outlines how you can put together a very nice beautiful melody yet have it still be something within the context of a metal setting [Music] [Music] again there's unbelievable combinations of melodies that you can put together like that that's something that's kind of nice and simple but again it's very it's a it's a in my mind a very beautiful thing and it does definitely work in a metal setting so have fun with that and do some experimenting [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right that look actually right there is something that I want to talk a little bit about with some new tunings so far everything that we've done has been in an a 440 tuning which is the standard tuning that most guitars and basses were designed to operate in however unless you've been living under a rock for the last 10 years you probably noticed that there's been a lot of new developments in heavy metal especially a lot of new tunings a lot of advent of the baritone guitar 7 string guitars things that have created created you know a new atmosphere and a new ambiance within within metal music one of the popular tunings that I like to use is what we call it drop deep and it's easy to do with your guitar obviously best if you use an actual you know professional tuner but you can tune down this one is where you just drop the e string down to a D and you can almost reference it yourself off of your own instrument because you have the D up here on the second string some people actually take the guitar at this point and tune it down a whole nother half-step which is what we call a drop D half step down is as it's commonly referred to and there's of course many many tunings out there that you can experiment with as we spoke about previously about the bass standing out from the band and using things like arpeggios and doing these different things that actually help develop the base as a melody instrument what I want to talk about also while we're in this mode is about having the bass follow exactly along with the guitars and playing the riff now it may seem like this is a none creative thing because you're not doing something that is sort of junks too posed to the to the guitars but following the guitar line is something that is actually a very solid reinforcement and a very popular thing in metal music so why don't you play along with this one again we were down into a drop D and now what we need to do here's what the notes are this is a pretty aggressive pretty fast-moving track here so if you you know buckle up for safety on this one with the notes that we're playing here are starting up here on the seventh fret up on the third string so we're coming down in a chromatic then down to the E string to the fifth fret [Music] and then we're gonna go up there's a little lick right here which goes up to the ninth fret we're using a lot of half-steps in this one which is kind of fun so it goes up to the ninth fret and the seventh fret eight seven and then down here on the bottom we're kind of using this thing and to sort of bounce off the bottom of it and that's where we need that drop tuning because here's really our new e right that's actually the Easter the E but now we can go down below it and pick up some extra grit down there going up at the seventh fret up to the fifth fret that's also another kind of cool thing about metals being able to sort of bounce off that I like that bouncy feeling like that this may take a little bit of practice to make sure you get all the notes right but again it's a good example to use a drop tuning and a way to really be a powerhouse to drive right along with the guitar play along on this one see what you can do [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] another key thing with that is being able to take two riffs that are very different from each other and being able to put them together as you review that one and if you download it off the site and you do some playing along with it you see that that's really kind of the early beginnings of what could very easily lay out to be a full-length song we've essentially got an intro and well kind of intro on a verse built in together but we'll call it a verse for this for our purposes where we have this riff that to me sounds like something that a singer could get behind and be able to lay a nice melody over top of to me a the chorus section of that would be after we do our little turnaround here then we head into the chorus now and of course we go back into what would be our second verse so essentially we've got two real solid real freight train kind of riffs that we can put together and just do a little turnaround piece in between to kind of you know glue them together so that they work right but they're both in the same key they're both very different riffs but they work together so as a songwriter these are the kind of things that I come up with when I'm when I'm composing new music sometimes I do it with the bass sometimes I do it with the guitar but I usually always work on composing around trying to get some real powerhouse riffs like that and if there's a couple of them that I can put together I feel like I've kind of well on my way to composing a song something that you can experiment with and definitely make use of any of the ideas you come up with and try doing that composing songs is a lot of fun and it kind of gets you out of just having to practice all the time it helps develop your creativity so have fun with that if you study the history of heavy metal early on things started out being a little bit more of a blues based using our pentatonic scales and things like that and with with the development of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath as we moved into some of the late seventies especially into the early eighties stuff we started to see the metal get a lot more progressive in the bass guitar certainly stepped out front now by about 1980 to 1983 the advent of speed and thrash metal became very popular and this is a style of music that I was very much integrated into and really helped pioneer and develop the bass playing for that type of music originally I guess you could probably trace it back to somebody like Lemmy from Motorhead who was really kind of the original speed metal bassist a lot of these bass lines are very fast the temples are very very high on your metronome and they're also a lot of fun to fun to play now there's a couple of things that we can do with with this as a bass player we can play exactly along with it as the guitar would and in this particular line that I've got it even incorporates a new technique called the pull off before we talked about the hammer on where we're hammering - a note here we're actually pulling off of the note and all the notes that I'm going to use in this particular exercise in this particular riff start up here on the twelfth fret on the a string then move down to the tenth fret and then we're down to the 8th fret so it then then even finishing on the seventh fret and if you'll notice one thing that I'm doing is I'm keeping this this right hand just chugging along here just hammering out 16th notes the whole time then I finished the the riff the turnaround is is is on the fifth fret and then down to the third fret back up to the fifth and then the seventh now another thing that I want to demonstrate as I'm going through this isn't also not playing not doing the hammer on and not copying the guitar line but just playing something that's a little more straight to just prove another another technique that you can use to just kind of keep that that's supportive line going all the way through and another thing to do while you're doing this because the tempo is so fast and it's easy to get ahead of the beat or get off of the beat one thing that's easy to do is to count in half time so as we're kind of trucking along here with that as our tempo we can count in half time okay one two three four now it feels odd to do especially when you're moving that fast and all of a sudden now you're kind of counting and halftime but what you'll notice that it does is it actually moves your whole body and your whole sense of rhythm it makes it just kind of relax and fall back may sound odd to try to do that in the speed and thrash-metal setting to relax but as a player it will help you find the pocket a little bit better so let's play along with this one and we're going to be Seguin we're starting up here with feed with the 12th fret [Music] that call [Music] [Music] half time [Music] again if you'll notice toward the end it's a little bit easier to do when you're not playing the riff to be able to count in halftime when you're able to do that [Music] always a lot easier to do if you happen to have a drum machine around but you can certainly do it with just a simple metronome so have fun with that thrash it up one of the things I like most about metal is the aggression I love the volume I love the attack I love the life style of everything about it and those of us that live the metal lifestyle you know exactly what I'm talking about I've also been a very aggressive bass player no matter what type of music that I played over the years and I'm a pretty well-rounded player I've done played with a lot of different people on a lot of different records and in a lot of different settings I always like to be a very aggressive player that's why you see me playing with a pick creating a good mean metal bass sound is very important approaching the bass as you probably notice from watching this this program it's a different approach than how most other people would approach it and it allows you to really step out and be a little more in the mix with the guitars and the drums part of getting that metal bass sound is hopefully what we've discovered here which is in our hands it's how we attack the string it's how we hit it when we're when we're picking as well that really more than anything is going to determine how you sound as a bass player but we can't ever underestimate the value of equipment and how we get the sound that we do now let's talk about recording for a moment if you've gone into the studio you know that oftentimes the studio is the best place to find your glaring defects which is why I recommend you try to record yourself as often as you can if you've got a little computer recording system if you've even got just a simple cassette tape recorder is a great thing to do to just record yourself often and listen back to it and be honest with yourself look at your your deficiencies and you're playing and address them and practice and that's that's part of the point of practicing is we can work on those things also when you're in the studio you may sound find that you know hey my bass isn't quite sounding the way that is in those records that I've been listening to and what can I do to fix that well I've been in the studio quite a bit over the years and I've gone through that same process couple things that I found I like to use usually a passive bass when I go into the studio passive bass is different from an active bass meaning that there the the circuitry is very simple there's no battery inside of it I usually plug into what's called a DI or a direct box and what that is is that's an interface that let you plug your bass pretty much directly right into the recording console most producers like that because they like to hear the essential nuts and bolts sound of the bass from there I like to plug into an amplifier that's separate from the DI and put a microphone on that so that way I can get that the the true sound of the amplifier the two of the of the direct box and the amplifier together the combination of those sounds is really what what most records have for the real meat potatoes of the bass sound another thing that I found because as you may have heard I haven't like to have a little bit of some grit a little bit of distortion in my sound but that's not something that's easily attainable to try to just plug into or to your guitar players distortion box because if you'll notice what happens is all the bottom end drops out so one of the techniques that I found that works good is aside from my di aside from my bass amp is to then plug into a guitar amp as well now you need a splitter box to do all these things and most Studios should have that by plugging into a separate guitar amp even like a head and up in a 4-12 cabinet something like that you can add a nice gritty Gainey distorted sound record that on a separate track and then in the mix down you can add that in as you as you may deem necessary to the song it's a way to keep a nice big fat full bass sound going on and be able to sprinkle some of that some of that grit and some of that distortion on top now in a live setting I've also made the mistake of getting this wonderful tone in the studio and then trying to use that exact same equipment to go out when I want to go play live and I assure you that you don't need to go to the expense to do it and and if you're going to get into the professional realm here with your bass playing do yourself a favor and approach the studio as one method and approach the live setting is another method usually just plugging into a simple you know a so a box of four tens or a box of eight tens with and with a you know an amp head you're gonna probably also take a DI to go out to the front of the house as well into the PA system there's some pretty standard things like that and most importantly get up there and get a sound that works well in your setting I've often found that sometimes when the changes his drum set or a guitar player changes his guitar amp all of a sudden my bass doesn't sound like it used to and I didn't change anything they changed so be aware of these kind of things when a drummer changes something guitar player changes something you're gonna have to change your sound accordingly and of course if you're gonna be out doing some gigs whether there are little Club gigs whether they're big stages that you're playing on you're gonna find that every stage is different and that's part of being professional and a professional is essentially when someone has paid you to play music and at this point your chops are getting up and you're starting to become a proficient enough musician you may be getting out and working on playing some shows so just be careful about taking any of this stuff too seriously out there because remember you're there to entertain the people so go out and have fun with it another cool technique is the use of harmonics now a harmonic is essentially when you finger across the string but you don't actually fingered the note some of the most popular harmonics and some of the best sounding ones that are easy to access when you're playing are here on the 12th fret appear on the seventh fret and also up here on the fifth fret now the way that I'm doing that is that I'm just touching the string and I'm picking it I'm not actually fingering it like this to hit a note but I'm just back you've just kind of lightly laying my hand my finger across it and again you can do what they call double stops which is almost like playing a chord with harmonics by playing two at a time [Music] if you want to get even more creative you can even put some notes under it [Music] and those are harmonics so as you can see what I'm holding now is a five string bass the advent of the five string bass has allowed bass players to be able to go down below the normal tuning of a guitar player as we talked about before the normal tuning is AG the D the a and the e the bass guitar is tuned fourths so what we're going to do is we're going to go down down below that and we're going to be able to hit a be just nice so the week and so on the fifth fret of this big fat string here the B string is our e so we can do now is we can go down below and play also what's nice about this you can play right along with the seven string guitar which is also tuned down to a bead so now you're on equal footing you can also get a six string bass which adds a high C up on top above the g string mostly an instrument used for a lot of jazz playing and certainly if you're going to be doing solo it soloing but for metal bass playing a five string is it gives a great instrument to have in your arsenal and one thing about it that you do have to work a little bit on it's the technique of how to play that string as you can be aggressively jamming along on your other four strings you have to be careful once you go down to this larger strength is it larger the string the more it starts to rattle right it gets kind of raspy and kind of ratty soon so you need to actually lighten your touch a little bit and Stroke the string as opposed to hammering on it in order to get the note to really ring out a little bit more [Music] same is true if you're going to be using your fingers [Music] it does require a different technique okay let's talk about practicing a little bit practicing often sounds a lot like homework like this dull boring thing that I have to endure in order to get through it but practicing can be a lot of fun I find that having a drum machine really helps kind of perk up my practicing because any drum machine is going to have a multitude of settings in there and even allow you to write some of your own drum patterns what's fun about practicing along with a drum machine is that you can go through all of these different grooves you can go through a shuffle a blues even a country beat you can go through rock beats and you can go through metal beats and all kinds of different things which will actually help your playing what I recommend is trying to even go through that some of the patterns with the drum machine play the same line using a different groove it may not be metal but it will help develop your sense of timing and your sense of groove and the other thing about practicing is that once you if you start things slow and really work on it because you're not on stage you're not performing for anybody practicing is a time to slow things down and really be critical of your playing and again be honest with yourself if there's a deficiency and something that you're playing really work on it maybe it's a right hand technique of your picking isn't good maybe the way you're stroking then plucking the string isn't good you some it could use some improvement maybe it's some of the passages that you're playing with your left hand be honest with yourself and be critical of yourself so that you can improve as a bass player I also like to work with different instruments it's great if you can learn some keyboard instruments because everything is laid out in front of you you can actually see what you're playing which is different than how it is on a guitar or a bass speaking of guitar it's good to be able to learn how to play guitar especially if you're gonna be a metal bass player a lot of what we do we're emulating and we're playing along with guitar parts and I always like to think of the base as the mortar in other words the cement that holds the blocks together a lot of people look at the foundation of a band as being the bass and the drums to me and most metal it's the rhythm guitar in the drums that is really the meat potatoes of a metal band of a metal song the bass often times get lost because it's often times there isn't the right tone or there isn't enough originality or creativity in the parts so practicing can help you work on those kind of things also I find spending time with the instrument away from a band setting is important because and the more that I spend time away from a group setting I'm able to develop my own personality and to develop my own chops and last but not least make sure that you have fun doing it I like to have some instruments laying around the house so that sometimes out of sight out of mind you know if I don't if I have my instruments put away in a case or in a closet I sometimes forget about him and sometimes days can go by before I really get my hands on playing because we can all get too busy doing other things even though I may want to play so leave some instruments out or leave your bass outs where you can see it this way you can pick it up and and and spend a little bit of time with it I think it's always better to spend a few minutes on a regular basis rather than not playing for a week or two and trying to cram and get it all in at once you're playing you're gonna definitely reap the reap the rewards by spending a lot of just even increments small incremental time with them the other thing is is try to be disciplined you know spend part of your time working on difficult things if you have only have a half hour to practice try to spend ten or fifteen minutes on the difficult things but then the last 10 or 15 minutes spend some time just having fun spend some time add living being creative doing some things that that just allow you to just kind of express your creativity and you don't have to think so much about what you're doing because sometimes knowing the rules is important sometimes being able to break the rules or forget about the rules is also where the fun comes in so most importantly have a good time with it and you're going to be able to reap the rewards and feel satisfied as a bassist oK we've covered a lot of ground and by this point you're probably your hands probably getting tired and you're really cranking away on your bass right now so let's finish this off here with some ruts a bunch of really cool stuff some metal dementia here we're gonna get into a few different things we're gonna be playing along with the guitar we're gonna be supporting the guitar a little bit and also want to introduce you to another really cool speaking of demented kid the diminished chord change chord shape which is something that's very popular in metal and it's something that really gives this kind of dark twisted sound now if you remember we talked about doing the the 1/5 and the octave well in this particular case we'll move up here to the 12th fret on the e-string and what we do here is we actually incorporate instead of using our third finger on that fifth we we actually do what we flat it meaning we move it down one fret which makes diminished and then we add the octave up above on this particular case I'm going to play it down so we're gonna be starting up here from the 14th under the 12th fret and then we're gonna move the down one whole step from the 1211 down to the 10th fret and then we're going to work on this little riff here to tie it together which is kind of a cool hip metal movement so what that is is that's the the fifth fret on the on the a string to the seventh fret using the half-step now we go up to the eighth fret so we're even incorporating a little bit of the chromatic scale in there too so let's put that together real quick [Music] there's a little bit of metal for you right there okay now the next section that we're gonna go is we're gonna chug along with the guitar here which is we're going to go down to the to the E string again and we're going to play on the 3rd 2nd and 1st fret as well as an open string [Music] as if that weren't enough we're going to now fight for the finality here of this whole thing we're going to add the sort of an arpeggio of the 1 5 and we're gonna stir this up starting up on the 10th fret the 9th fret and down to the 8th fret so whereas we're finishing this like [Music] okay so we'll put it together real slow [Music] [Music] and then we finish it back out with the other way okay so let's give this one a try this one's pretty rockin and there should be a lot of fun and again and incorporates pretty much everything that we've talked about here in level 2 so thanks for joining me and let's go thrash this one out I'll see you from the stage [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Eyad Mostafa

Views: 17,472

Rating: 4.9697733 out of 5

Keywords: learn bass guitar in 8 weeks, chords beginner, beginner, scales, learn bass guitar fast, bass, learn, learn bass, bass guitar, fast, notes, songs, megadeth, education, music, david ellefson, dvd, video, movie, film, disc, 4 string, bassist, g string, a string, d string, e string, riffs, chords, intermediate, advanced, cool, cool riff, pick, picked bass, fingerstyle, 1 hour, in 1 hour, quick, rock, metal, rockhouse, method, fretboard, fret, nut, bridge, in a month, in 30 days, in, 30, days, 30 days, 1 day, hour

Id: Gs3I5pg1UKY

Length: 60min 27sec (3627 seconds)

Published: Tue May 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Bug_Papan]

Wow, quality of audio and video is just great!