Exploring Different Bass Guitar Techniques

A bass player is a crucial component of the collective whole, the rock band.

Bass guitarists play an instrumental role in manufacturing the beat that makes you bang your head when the song is being played. Bass guitars create solid notes that can be used as a foundation for other instruments. All the instruments in the assembly will either be added on top of these notes or work beside them to create a cohesive piece of music. 

There’s a lot of debate going on about finding out which is the best and the most important bass guitar technique to learn as a beginner. To be honest, there’s no right or wrong answer for this one; it’s more of a personal preference as to where to start and what to learn first. Any method, training, or technique, when done right, can make your bass shine. You can be a great bass player as long as you are comfortable and confident with what you’re doing.

Introduction to Essential Bass Guitar Techniques

However, if this is the first time you have picked up a bass guitar and are looking for a way to start playing it, then we have got you covered with the essential bass guitar techniques that will make your overall music journey with bass guitar much smoother and streamlined. 

Today, with this blog, we are going to show you 9 beginner to intermediate bass-playing techniques that every bass player needs to know. These techniques will allow you to push creative boundaries and expand your musical knowledge, helping you create punchy bass lines. There’s no particular order for you to learn them, so explore them as you wish, but try to incorporate all of them in your Bass Guitar Exercises. 

9 Different Bass Playing Techniques

Slap bass

Slap bass is the most iconic technique that many bass players use when they perform live. Musicians who can create sound using the slap bass technique are revered and praised by other musicians as well.

Not only does this technique make your live performance edgy and memorable, but it also provides a percussive sound that is usually louder and much brighter than its common counterpart, which plucks bass strings. Use your thumb to slap and your finger to pop strings.

Muting

Muting makes sure that your notes are not bleeding over one another, as it could easily take away the rhythmic nature of the bass for which it is known. There are multiple levels of muting techniques, so it depends on you when it comes to deciding which part of your hand you want to use, from the palm, ring finger, and thumb.

The easiest of them all is palm muting for bass guitar; in this technique, you have to press down the strings firmly with the heel of your right hand and use your thumb to pick strings. In addition to this, you can also use your thumb to mute the E string and your ring finger to mute the A string of the bass guitar.

Plucking

Plucking is the most common style for playing bass guitar, and it is also called pizzicato. If you look closely at the bassist of The Who rock band, you can see the master of this technique in his work. Plucking bass guitar strings are a bit different from 6 string guitars. Yes, most of the strings you will be playing are going to use fingernails, but as you start practising chords using Free Bass Lessons, you will slowly move towards using whole fingertips.

Apart from using fingertips or whole fingers, there are other aspects of plucking that require your close attention; one such aspect is how hard you should pluck the strings and what your hand position should be. Each of these aspects will influence your style and add new layers of dynamics to your sound.

Chords

If you look at the chords that are used in conventional guitar and piano, you will notice that each chord is made of at least three notes that must be played simultaneously. But, with bass guitar, you are responsible for producing single-note lines, and since bass has a much wider fret, so there’s a bit more space in between the 4 strings. So, as a beginner, the best thing you could do is start by practising diads, which are basically your 2-note chords.

The 2-note chords are also known as harmonic intervals in musical theory, and once you are comfortable with 2-note chords, you move to 3-notes. By learning how to play different chords on the bass guitar, you will be able to take full advantage of the fretboard and create a unique sound from your bass guitar when composing or playing a song.

Ear training

One thing a bass player has better than anyone else in the band is a good ear. As a bassist, it is up to you to bridge the gap between the rhythm of a drummer and the pitch produced by the vocalist and guitarist. To match this skill, one must have good ears and keep on improving them by practicing key listening skills. 

Use interval training ear training techniques to quickly recognize different musical intervals present in the composition. This technique also improves your vital sense of relative pitch. After you have gained confidence in your hearing skills, you can start improvising bass riffs and solos because you will have a mental note of how a chord is going to sound even before you play it on the bass guitar.

Playing with a pick

Playing bass guitar or practicing a new chord that you have learned in Bass Jazz Lessons with Pick is another popular technique that a bassist needs to learn if they want to play rock, jazz, and heavy metal music. Bass picks are generally larger than that of conventional guitars and are more robust as well because the strings are harder to pick due to their thickness. To use a pick on the bass guitar, you have to keep one thing in mind: the upstrokes of the bass guitar are as important as its downstrokes.

Floating right-hand thumb positioning

When playing bass guitar, you are surely going to come across a time when you can’t really figure out where to put the thumb of your right hand. See, with the floating thumb technique, you can move your thumb along with the plucking fingers and use it for string-crossing while keeping a straight wrist angle. Gary Willis developed this technique.

Tapping

Tapping is a crucial bass guitar technique that you are going to learn in Bass Blues Lessons. Also, this particular technique is a bit complex compared to the others that we have shared with you in this blog. In tapping, you have to use both your hands to tap the strings on the fretboard to create harmonious melodies, which would otherwise be impossible to replicate if you were playing guitar using a basic finger-picking technique.

The key to mastering tapping is knowing exactly which chord and note you need to play. You have to remove the guesswork, which can be done by going back to musical theory along with scale practice sessions. Moreover, when tapping your bass guitar, make sure you put a bit of force behind your fingers to get the most out of the sound from the string.

Use a metronome

Metronome is a tool for measuring time intervals via audible clicks for every beat. It can help you identify timing errors that you might be making when playing those four strings on your bass guitar. Likewise, with the use of a metronome, you can replicate rhythm with precision. 

Lots of bassists in bands use a metronome when recording songs for their albums because bass guitar and drums are the two instruments that get recorded first, as they act as a guide for other instruments and even for vocalists. Moreover, with the metronome, you will be able to keep up with the required tempo for different songs. 

Conclusion

Well, we are sure you are too excited to try out all the techniques we mentioned above, but that’s not the goal of this blog. We want you to try each technique as accurately as possible so that you can incorporate it into your playing.

Yes, learning about all these techniques feels a bit overwhelming at first, but if you keep up with your practice, you will gradually be able to swim in the ocean of endless possibilities. Now try them yourself and make your instrument sing in the ways that you like and admire.