# Upright Bass - Beginner Tips?



## Celloissimo

As you can tell from my username, I'm a cellist and the cello is my primary instrument. However, my conductor wants me to learn a little bit of upright bass for jazz band, and I'm fully aware that the cello and DB are two totally different animals. I'm using a school double bass so I don't need to worry about buying one and all that. 

I've played with the upright before but it's difficult to get a sound out of it. It doesn't have to do with the tuning or anything (perfects 4ths instead of 5ths like the cello), but rather how colossal and cumbersome the instrument is and the thickness of the strings.

So give me a laydown for some basic tips/techniques for playing and to get started on the instrument, and just enough to get by, and playing a walking bassline. I will be pizz'ing however, not bowing for what I'm doing. 

Thank you!


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## HarryDearman

Look up Jeff Bradetich's method book


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## Nate Miller

I played jazz ever since I was a kid, and my best friends have always been bass players, so I can help. 

the more string, the more flesh, the more better your sound. Lay your index finger along the string by its length and use as much flesh as you can. 

there is a book by Rufus Reed called "The Evolving Bass Player" that you should pick up. you need to look at jazz methods for bass, not classical ones because you need to walk changes and that's a different animal.

the way you play with a drummer is to put little rhythmic accents in the line so it isn't always quarter notes. you pay attention to the bass drum and snare and follow the drum set player until you figure it out and can drive the bus yourself.

and with the bass, if you can't play low and slow, then you can't play. Its as simple as that. 

the most important part of playing jazz bass is to have the right feel, so you need to know what jazz sounds like. Listen to Ray Brown. there's lots of good players, but Ray Brown is one of the true models of how to play a jazz bass. He also published some method books that are very good, too.


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## Guest

The big mistake novices often make is to play pizz like they are playing a bass guitar with the fingers at right angles to the strings:










That's guaranteed not to make much sound. Place your right hand with the fingers parallel to the strings instead of at right angles with your thumb anchored behind the fingerboard or on the edge of it, hook as much of your total finger as you can behind the string and pull at a right angle:










This will give you a thumping sound that you can hear and it drives. Basically, you will be using the first two fingers. Neils Pederson used the first three although I've never seen anyone else play that way and I don't recommend trying to learn it.

There are clips on YouTube that will help with that. The left hand is a lot more complicated but you have to learn to space your fingers such that when you lay them down on the fingerboard, they land right where the note is. This takes practice. It's worse to be a little off than a lot off because a little off is actually more dissonant. So you have to learn to find the precise notes. YouTube should have something for that too. I'll see if I can find a good one.

To walk, each bar is a chord or two chords. I assume you know chord progressions so find out what the chord progression is (in jazz, usually ii-V, ii-V-I or I-vi-ii-V). You're going to appeggiate the chords. Say, the first bar is D minor 7 with a ii-V progression, then you will have 4 notes to play in that bar from that chord (you're always walking in 4/4 time). For starters, just play root (D), third (F), fifth (B) and root (D) again. The next bar will be in G7 (since it is the V of the C scale), so play root (G), third (B), fifth (D) and root (G). Then the third bar might be E minor 7--so play E, G, B, E--then the next bar will be A7 so play A, C#, E, A. Put accents on 2 and 4. There is walking in a nutshell.

Suppose you have ii-V in a single bar, e.g. bar 1 is D-7 and G7, then play two notes from D-7 and two from G7--such as root-fifth of each or root-third of each or root-fifth of one and root third of the other, etc. Then you want to learn to add in 7ths so your walks don't sound monotonous. As you progress, you'll learn all kinds of new ways to walk that are too complicated to explain here. This is just very basic stuff to get you started, as you requested.

Here's a good explanation of right hand technique:





Just practice the first technique he shows you. The second is for more advanced playing and i don't even use it much myself and I've been playing for a long time.





Here is a good left hand technique clip. What's important here is to maintain a spacing between your index finger and the other three. Then keep a smaller spacing between the second finger and third and fourth. I had one instructor who called this the "penguin". But anyway, the third and fourth fingers are used in unison--never separately. This spacing will help your fingers land exactly on the notes once you learn where the notes are. When you press with the 3rd and 4th fingers, for example, you do NOT lift the first and second fingers but press with them as well so that your spacing is correct otherwise you'll be slightly off the notes which sounds really bad. He shows you this but I want to emphasize it because it's very important. Once you get above where the neck attaches to the body, you have to switch to new hand positions and also go into thumb positions. Again, this is for advanced playing and not something you need to worry about now but just be aware of it.

This is very basic stuff and there's so much more to know but see if this helps. Any questions, let me know.


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## Pugg

HarryDearman said:


> Look up Jeff Bradetich's method book


Firm statement for a first time poster, like it!:tiphat:


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