Chords for Free Gospel Bass Breakdown: Right-Hand Technique Part 1

_ _ _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ [N] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ Hey, what's going on everybody?
Terrence Rose here and we're going to start a series of free beginner bass lessons, free gospel lessons.
And the first lesson we're going to work on is some right hand techniques.
And I've been noticing a lot of bass players have bad technique, so I just felt the urge
or the motivation to encourage people with what I know and I just want to get that back to everybody.
So let's jump into it.
Now, first thing first, _ _ placement of the right hand.
You must have great placement.
You can _ place your thumb either on the pickup, the first pickup, on top of the B string,
in between the pickups or the E string if you have a 4 string, on the last pickup or
on the bridge. _
Now, playing it [Ebm] closer to the bridge back here gives you a tighter sound, like so. _ _ _ _ _ _
And playing closer to the neck gives you a fatter sound. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Db] _
[Eb] _ [D] [N] So _ it depends, fatter, tighter, take your pick.
Me, I personally like to play on the first pickup and that's where I have my most success
set and when I'm rotating down, if I'm playing the 6 string, I probably drop my thumb down
to the D string.
So it's all about placement.
Great placement puts your hand in a position to add speed and do the licks and tricks that you want.
_ Secondly, let's talk about finger style.
Let's stop playing with one finger, all you beginner new bass players, and let's start
incorporating both fingers.
Alright, it's called pizzicato style and we're going to alternate with this being the first
finger and that being the second finger.
Two different types of plucking, I'm sorry, two different types of _ hitting or attacking
and string action is plucking and digging.
I'll show you the first.
Plucking is when you first put your finger up underneath the string and you pluck out. _
You want to get the tip of your finger and just put it up underneath it and pull it out
hard as you can.
_ And you want to alternate strings and you want to alternate fingers. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ Just to give you a hint of how it sounds, it will [Ab] go something like this.
[Bb] _ [Db] _
_ [Eb] _ [Gb] _ [Ab] _ [B] _ [Gb] _ _ _
_ _ [B] _ [Ab] _ [Ebm] _ _ [Db] _ _
[Bb] _ [Ab] _ [G] _ _ _ [A] Alright, I forgot about the B string.
[N] Now, that's picking or plucking.
That works great with just if you want to play pizzicato style and instead of thumping
and pulling out like that, you can pick it and get that same type of vibe.
_ The other pizzicato style, I'm sorry, is digging.
This is what I call my own technique.
I like to dig in the string and dig through.
That technique is when you actually take your finger and instead of going underneath, _ _ _ _ _ _ you're
should feel your finger going down which gives you that digging feeling.
_ _ _ And you want to take the, when you hit the string, you want to actually rest on the next
string above it. _ _
_ So, dig into your string. _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ Now, when we get up here to the B string, _ [Bb] _ you can continue to dig but more likely you
will hit the palm of the base of your hand right here.
_ Or if you just pluck that one, that's fine as well.
But I like to actually feel my fingers [N] hitting the palm of my hand.
That gives me my know about where I'm at as far as on the B string.
Now, another good thing I like about the digging technique is it also gives you a reference
of knowing where you at as far as playing what string.
Because sometimes when you play a 6 string or you 4 string guys, upgrade to a 5 string
or you 5 string guys, upgrade to a 6 string or you 6 string guys, upgrade to a 7, you
really need to know where you at.
Alright, and we're going to work on hand to hand coordination but that's in the lesson to come.
[D] Alright, so let's dig and pluck. _ _
Alright, dig [Cm] and [Gb] pluck.
_ _ [Ab] Two different types of ways to attack the base with your right hand.
Now you say, hey Terrence, I got [Ebm] that.
[Dbm] You probably can learn that in a good 5 minutes.
[N] Let's practice that for about 30 minutes a day.
Two days go by, you say, hey I got that.
Hey how do I build up speed?
Alright.
The best way to build up speed is to isolate each finger.
Doing the digging and plucking exercise that I just showed.
So you isolate your index and you go pluck, dig. _
And you alternate strings.
Pluck, _ dig.
_ _ Pluck, _ dig. _
_ Pluck, [D] dig. _ _ _
_ _ [Gb] Alright now you do that same _ plucking, digging, alternating exercise isolating your second finger.
I don't want to stick my middle finger up.
So we're going to pluck, _ _ _ _ _ _ pluck, _ [Dbm] and dig.
_ Pluck, [B] _
_ _ _ _ pluck, _ and dig.
_ [Bb] And pluck on the B string and dig.
_ [N] Now the trick to that is curling the rest of your fingers.
I don't know if you noticed but my third and fourth finger was curled as tight as possible.
Sometimes you guys can't curl them and it just comes with more exercise and practice.
Curl them as tight as possible, especially with your middle [Ebm] finger and that will give
you the [N] speed you want.
So when _ you're trying to do tricks and licks and chords you can have the speed to get down
the frets, I'm sorry, down the strings.
[D] _ _ And _ [B] _ back up.
_ [Bb] It's always easy coming back up.
You can't even [B] cheat and just. _ _ _ _
But going down, _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [Bb] _ _ [N] as you can see personally I like to dig into the strings.
I only use plucks sometimes when I don't want to slap but I still want to hear that plucking
and popping sound.
Alright, so those are the first three things we're going to work on.
I will post another video next week.
_ What we'll take, I'll give you a week to work on that.
What we'll take, what we learned this week, apply it, practice it, and then we'll add
some