Chords for 3 Hot Tips To Sound AWFUL On Bass

Greetings bass couteres, Josh Fosgreen here.
And you know, we've spent enough time
trying to learn how to get better at playing bass
and being good musicians and stuff.
What about if you wanna sound just really, really terrible?
Maybe you're trying to get a band to fire you
or you wanna fail an audition.
I'm gonna give you my three hottest tips
for sounding like you totally suck at bass.
Let's do it.
Tip number one, place your left hand
on the wrong part of the fret.
So normally when you're playing bass,
you wanna get a good tone.
You wanna aim for kind of the middle
towards the end of the area on each fret
to get a clean tone.
So if we wanna sound bad,
what you wanna [A] do is aim for the very back end of the fret,
almost touching the previous fret wire.
So if I was playing a bass line like this, _ _ _ _
[Em] now that [A] sounds a little bit too good.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take my finger positioning
and just slide over here towards the very beginning
of that fifth and seventh fret that I'm using,
almost touching the previous fret wire.
And here's what it sounds like.
_ [Eb] _
[A] _ _ _ _ [Ab] Now two things can happen here
that both sound terrible.
One is [Ab] I'll get a really butty [A] version
of the correct [Ab] pitch.
The other thing, if I'm even further back,
is I'll actually get the note below the one I'm aiming for,
which will sound even worse.
So tip number one, [A] incorrect fret position. _ _ _ _ _ _
[E] _ _ [A] Tip number two is for your right hand.
Now if you wanna sound truly awful at bass,
it's not enough just to play on the wrong part of the fret.
You also need to over pluck.
Pluck as hard as you can like your life depends on it.
Here's our bass line from before
with correct fret positioning in the left hand. _
[Em] _ [A] _ _ _ _ Now all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start plucking
as hard as I possibly can with my right hand
and listen to the results.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [B] Now two things happen.
One is the tone gets awful and farty.
Number two, my rhythm gets worse
because there's so much tension in my right hand
that I can't execute my sense of rhythm correctly.
Now if I put those two tips together
that we've got so far, incorrect fret positioning
and over plucking, I get [A] this.
_ [Eb] _
_ [A] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Eb] _ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _ [Eb]
Yeah!
Our third and final tip for sounding truly awful
applies not only to bass but any instrument you play
and the trick here is to stop listening
to everybody but yourself.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Let's try this out.
I'm gonna put on a drum beat
which normally [A] I might actually listen to
_ _ to [Em] make sure that we're playing in [A] time together
and all that good stuff.
But right now I wanna sound really awful.
So first I'm gonna do tip number one.
I'm gonna put my hand in [Ab] the wrong place _ _ _
_ _ and I'm [A] gonna over pluck.
_ _ [Eb] _
_ [A] _ _ But it still sounds too good
because I haven't stopped listening to the drums yet. _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ Oh yeah, you feel that?
[G] You [A] feel that tempo drip?
_ _ _ [Eb] _
[A] _ _ _ _ [N] Yeah!
Okay, so those are your three tips
for sounding awful on bass.
Now I know between you and me
that you don't wanna sound awful at bass
which is why embedded in these tips to sound awful
are the tips to not sound awful
which is to correctly position your fingers
towards the middle end side of the fret
so that you don't get buzzed.
Don't over pluck with your right hand
so you get a nice solid tone
that doesn't sound like a big explosive fart machine.
And listen to the musicians you're playing with.
It's important, musicians.
Listen to the musicians you're playing with.
Perhaps most important of all.
But these are things I really think about
because I've been teaching for so many years,
I've needed to demonstrate to my students
what it sounds like when you do things wrong.
So I had to figure these things out.
Like okay, how can I sound like
I just picked up the bass for the first time?
Well, I put my fingers in the [A] wrong place.
I'll pluck it later.
[Eb] _ [E] _ Also try to play faster
than you actually feel comfortable with.
There's a little bonus tip.
_ _ Which is easy to do when you're over plucking
because you can't play fast if you're going
da, da, da, trying to kill your bass every pluck.
Thank you for watching.
Please let me know in the comments
if you were able to sound awful
by following these three tips.
Maybe try these out privately.
Don't try them out at your next band rehearsal
or especially not at a gig.
Oh my God.
If anybody tries this out at a gig,
please upload a video and send us a link.
That would just be, that would be so mean to the audience.
Make sure you subscribe to this channel
so you can learn more about how to actually sound good
on the bass and you can also check out my books
at joshpotscreen.com slash books
if you want to learn more about notes on the neck,
scales and arpeggios and all that fun stuff.
See [Gm] you guys next time.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
The power of bass compels you.
[Dm]
Subscribe to this channel for more bass lessons
or click [Bb] on the video.
You can watch another [Cm] one right [D] now.
Ha [Bb] ha ha ha ha ha [E] ha