If you are like me and picked up playing bass guitar from playing regular guitar, then there may be some new things to learn about as you try to lay down the perfect bass line.  It took me a little while to focus on certain things that have helped my playing down low.  Coaxing different sounds to create a mood for a song has made me open up to the instrument and stop thinking about chord changes, and theory.  It has made me focus on feel, and ambience, and drama.

In my experience in indie-type rock, the bass is the dark heart of the music, creating a landscape that the rest of the music plays in.  But technically it took me a little while to see that world.

FINGERTIPS or PICKS

Every instrument has a language that it speaks in.  If you were playing violin, you could bow it, pluck it, legato, or staccato, etc.  The same goes for the electric bass, but perhaps it isn’t so obvious if you are picking up the bass after playing guitar.  There is the finger sound using the meaty part of your fingertips…

REST STROKE

1.  Place your index finger or middle finger on the “bottom side of the string (floor side)”.

2.  Rake your finger through the string and have it land on the string above it (towards the sky).  This is the basic “Rest Stroke”.

This should sound meaty, and thick and warm.  Dulled when compared with playing with a pick, but different.

PICK

1.  Pluck the string with a pick as you would a guitar.

The rest stroke and the picking technique is only scratching the surface of what types of sounds one can make on a bass, but it is good to think about it as a starting point into a world where you are being creative with sounds coming out of your bass.

I was in the orthodoxy when I first started that I would only learn how to play with my fingers and not pay attention to using a pick.  The bass lines and playing in those times started to sound the same.  But as I kept gaining experience, I noticed that certain songs required a certain “touch” when playing with my fingers.  Harder, softer, lazier, “on top” of the beat.  Then it dawned on me that I should open it up to all of the tools that could possibly be used to play music with.  And that not only includes picks, but it includes the sounds that you set on the amp, or on the bass itself.  It all depends on the song and what it needs or how you can be creative with a song.

If you are using your fingers, do you want to use the tip of your finger to get a more staccato sound?  Or the meaty fleshy part to get a warmer sound?  Or the side of your thumb (like Sting does it?). Or partly muted with the palm of your hand?  Or getting a soft pick?  Or a thick pick?

It’s endless.  But it is something that I feel a bass player should start out playing with the intent on being creative with as many tools as possible.  And one day, they’ll be writing bass playing techniques about playing bass with your tongue!