Bass Guitar Lessons For Intermediate

1. Music Coach: Bass Lessons For Intermediate: Welcome to the Music Coach Online Intermediate Base program. My name is Todd Porter, and I'm the music coach. Several years ago, I released the Music Coach online beginner based program and after so much success, with hundreds of students on many different platforms across many different countries, I've decided to add an intermediate program that begins right where the beginner program ends. In the intermediate program, there are going to be 12 video lessons that are gonna take you through many different topics, including things like how to play in multiple genres. So how to play on a Ballad, How to Play in 68 Time to four Time on funk song on a Rock song. And you're also gonna learn several new techniques in terms of how toe use dynamic and rhythmic density in order to fit in musically into any situation. There's also gonna be 12 video practice lessons that have visual metre gnomes, backing tracks and everything. You need to be able to take the information from the lesson and really internalize it, so all you'll need is a set of headphones in your instrument and you'll be ready to go. The intermediate program also features a jammer him with backup tracks in every genre that you're gonna be learning. Thes will also feature a no base option where you can have the drums and the guitar without me playing the base so you can really feel like you're right in there with a real band. You could test drive this by checking out some of the free sample lessons, and if you're ready to get started, click the enroll button and I look forward to seeing you inside. 2. Lesson 1: learning all the notes on all the E string: hi and welcome to Lesson one in the intermediate base program for the music coach. So we're gonna begin by learning all of the notes on the e string. And one of the most important things to be able to do on a bass guitar is to feel really comfortable with all of the names of the notes on every string. Because the base is going to sound really different in different parts, like in terms of where you are on the neck, you're going to be trying to blend where you are with maybe a guitar player or keyboard player or where the kick drum like how it's resonating depending on the style of music, the urine so feeling really comfortable with where the notes are everywhere on the neck on all the strange is really important. So to begin with, we're just gonna take the E string, which is the lowest strength. And the reason we're gonna be using the E major scale is because it's a really common key to be playing in when you're in guitar based music. So things like rock and R and B and funk and lots of things were any guitar or bass players will be writing music there could be in the key and be very often so. The notes from the E string for the E major scale are the E string Open F Sharp, which is on the second fret off the eastern G sharp, which is on the fourth fret of the E String A, which is on the fifth threat of the E String B, which is on the seventh Fret C sharp, which is on the nine Threat de Sharp, which is on the 11th Threat, and E, which is on the 12 Threat, will do that one more time for you. So he is on open after it is on to G. Sharp is on four days on five. B is on seven c. Sharps on nine, de Sharps on 11 and E on 12th now in the practice video were only gonna be playing the one octave e major scale. So what? We just what I just played right there. Now, later on for more advanced things. You the entire bass guitar. The second octave goes above the 12 threat, so there's an F sharp on the 14th fret and Solana's it goes up higher, but in this course we're just gonna be dealing with the one octave on each string. And like I said, it's really important. There's a lot of repetition in the practice video, but it's really important to also say the notes out loud as you play them, so the notes are gonna be up on the screen. But what I'd like you to do is say them out loud. So here's an example of how I play it a after shirt G sharp A. B C sharp d Zarb E. Because saying it out loud is really gonna help reinforce where the notes are. And when you look down at the neck after you do this enough times you're going to start to feel really confident you're gonna look her down and just see like there's an a right there . Onda. When you're trying toe, play a baseline, you may want to move it to a different part of the guitar at a certain point. And if you have a lot of confidence that you know where all the A's are or where all the F sharps are on each string, you're gonna have time. The confidence to be able to do that when you're playing on a single string like we're gonna be doing going up and down the neck, ascending and descending. The changing of your hand position is going to be happening all the time. So unlike when you're playing in one position and you're going up and down the strings this way, you can kind of use your fingers for a certain number of frets when we're really warmer, repositioning our hand the whole time, going up it on the neck. I'm going to give you one little tip here. So when you're playing the first few notes, what I'm always looking for is where are the semi tones? So, like between G sharp and A, there's from fret number four different number five. So rather than trying to slide there, I try and use my number one finger on the lower note when I'm going this way and my second finger on the next. No going this way. Now when I'm descending, I use it in reverse. So if I'm coming down the neck, I would end up using my second finger again on the A and my first finger on the G sharp on what this allows is when you eventually start playing at a lot higher speed, you're going to be happy to have the flexibility to rather than having to slide between semi tones. When you're going from whole tones, like from G sharp f sharp, you're gonna need to be, you know, you're going to need to be moving fingers almost all the time if you're going at any kind of speed. Okay, so I'll see you in the practice video. 3. Intermediate Bass Practice 1: we're gonna begin by playing all the notes on the E major scale on the E string. We're gonna play them is half notes, so each note will get two clicks. 12 ready. Go! E f sharp, G sharp. A e c sharp the sharp e. Now we're going to try that again. Ascending from the bottom 12 Ready? Go! E f sharp, G sharp. A B C sharp. G sharp, E. Now we're going to try ass sending two times in a row without a break in the middle. 12 Ready. Go! E f sharp, G sharp. A B C sharp d sharp E E f sharp G sharp A B C sharp D sharp E Now we're going to try descending from the 12th. Fret on the eastern 12 Ready? Go! E D sharp. C sharp. Be may G sharp. F sharp. E Don't try it again to ready. Go G D sharp. C sharp. Be okay. G sharp. F sharp. E Now we're gonna try descending two times in a row without a break in the middle. 12 Ready? Go! E Be sharp. C sharp. Be a g sharp f sharp. E e d sharp c sharp the day G sharp f sharp E Now we're going to go ask sending and descending four times in a row. One to you. Ready? Go E f sharp g sharp. A B c sharp The sharp e e d sharp c sharp me a g sharp. Have sharp e Okay. F sharp, g sharp. A B c sharp. Be sharp. E e d sharp C sharp, be a g sharp. Have sharp e Okay. F sharp, g sharp. A B c sharp. The sharp e e d sharp C sharp b A g sharp, half sharp e Okay, f sharp, g sharp. A B c sharp. Be sharp. E g D sharp C sharp B A g sharp, half sharp e. 4. Lesson 2: learning all the notes on all the A string: hi and welcome the lesson two of the intermediate based program in the music coach. This time we're gonna be working on learning the chord tones on the one chord in the key that we're in, which is e major now, one of the most important things to understand in all instruments butts really specifically on the base is what the chord tones are on any given court. The you're on. And the reason is, is that as a bass player, you have the ability to outline what is happening harmonically. Now, when you play like a guitar, for example, or a piano, you can play multiple notes at the same time to get this effect. Now, although technically it's possible to play multiple announcing the base at the same time because of the register it's in. It's so low down it's almost never done because it's a kind of muddy to have multiple notes going on at the same times hard for years, to tell the difference. So one of the ways that we handle that on the bases that we play different notes inside the cord as it's going by. So if we have a four bar, sorry a four beat like one bar. We have four beats in a bar. Weaken, play multiple notes on the court to kind of paint the picture of what's happening now. In this example, I'm gonna be showing you the court tones on an E major court. So in E major court is made up off the route, which is e. If the court is major, the third of the note is going to be G sharp now. The reason we get to that is because if he is 1/2 surface to G sharpest three, so we have e g sharp. The five of the court is the next quarter tone, so we're gonna playing B and then e again. So that's where you get that or for playing in a single position of bum bum bum Bump V. Now the third really tells the story that the court is major. So if you're trying to play a happier kind of sounding baseline, using the major third is probably the most important. No, you can add to align. So here's like sort of ah happier funk bassline, so that third is giving it that kind of clear indication that the court is major. Conversely, if you want the court to have a blue Zier or more minor sound, just changing the major third to the minor third will make a huge difference. So if I play the same style of bass part but I'm gonna play G Natural and said, that is a way to change the color of this of the cord. Really, really. Simply And lastly, the other courts home that really effects the sounding of the court being major minor is the seventh degree of the scale. So in the key of E major, the seventh note in the scale is D sharp, and that gives us again a very major sound. And if you flatten the seventh down to D natural, we get this again very bluesy, minor kind of sound, especially if you put together with the Minor Third. Later on in the program, we're going to be not really messing around. We're gonna be changing around the major thirds and the major sevenths to minor thirds and minor seventh. It's a really great weight of change up your base part without making a huge structural change, but it changes the color in the feel of it really easily. In the practice video, we're gonna be working on learning the names of the notes in the e major scale on the A string Now, just like we did with the last couple of videos. Knowing the notes really confidently on every string is super important to being ableto move based. Parts around the neck change things like the major thirds and major sevenths to make it sound more bluesy. So here are the notes on the A string. So the a string open is a B is on the second fret. C Sharp is on the fourth fret. D Sharp is on the six. Threat is on the seven Threat sure is on the ninth Fret G Sharp is on the 11th. Threatened A is on the 12th fret. So it's very similar to the pattern on the E string. The Onley major difference that you're going to notice is that we're gonna be playing the six Threat instead of the fifth threat. So we're gonna go Coben Chu 4679 11 12 That's the only difference in this one. So here's what we're time A. B is on the second fret C Sharp is on the fourth fret. D Sharp is on six. Fred. He's on seventh. Fret Nef Sharp's on the ninth Fret G Sharp is on the 11th threat, and A is on the 12th fret. And just one little sort of practice to you can use on this is now that you have two strings, you can play the e string open and kind of when you have it ringing. Just give you a little your ear, a little bit of context as to what key that you're in. All right, I'll see in the practice video. 5. Intermediate Bass Practice 2: We're now gonna play the notes on the A string using half notes, starting with ass Sending from the string being open one to ready. Go Bay B C sharp. Be sharp. B f sharp, G sharp. A. Let's try it again. 12 Ready? Go. Okay. B c sharp. The sharp e f sharp. She sharp a Now we're gonna try ass sending two times in a row without a break in the middle. One to ready. Go. Gay B c sharp d sharp e f sharp. She sharp a a be c sharp g sharp B f sharp g sharp A Now we're gonna go descending from the 12th fret of the A string one to ready Go a She sharp f sharp e d sharp c sharp b a Let's try that again. One to ready go A g sharp f sharp G b sharp C sharp, B a. Now we're gonna play descending two times in a row without the break in the middle. One to ready. Go. Okay, g sharp. Half sharp. B D sharp. C sharp. Be a a g sharp f sharp. E b sharp. C sharp. Be a now. We're gonna go ask sending and descending four times in a row, one to ready go a mi c sharp de sharp e f sharp g sharp a a g sharp have sharp e b sharp c sharp, be a bay me C sharp g Sharp B f sharp g sharp a a g Sharp f sharp B B sharp c Sharp b a k B c Sharp d Sharp e f Sharp g sharp a a g sharp f sharp e the sharp c sharp be a bay B C sharp de sharp e f sharp g sharp A a g sharp f sharp e b sharp c sharp, be a 6. Lesson 3: learning all the notes on all the D string: welcome the lesson three of the intermediate base program with music Coach. In this lesson, we're gonna be learning about how to play the notes on the D String in our e major scale. And we're also gonna expand on what we did last time in terms of learning the court tones of the other chords that are in our core progression. Now, the one chord, four chord and five chord is a very, very common device, used mostly and things like blues and rock and a lot of folk music from around the world. They are the three naturally occurring major chords inside of every key, Um, and part of what makes them so common is that it's ah so money so much in music that's handed down orally through traditions. Major chords are a little easier for people's years to grasp on to them minor courts, my records a little bit more complicated and before music could be recorded. If we were learning a song like Happy Birthday, which has the one court, the forecourt of the five court in it, or traditional nursery rhymes and things like that, they're almost all going to be made up of the one chord the forecourt in the five court. So on the four chord in our key, the forecourt is the a court. So the accord is gonna have the A, which is one C sharp, which is the third note of the accord. Now, this is where can get a little tricky, you might say, Well, C Sharp is the sixth note in the key of E But now we're gonna think about the A chord as its own sort of little solar system. So when the So we're playing the a chord, we're now going to think of A as being one B is being two, and C sharp is being three. So we've got a C sharp and E that's our major. Try it. A C sharp E C sharp may bump a bump up a bomb. Now we're gonna be less likely to mess around with the third and the seventh in terms of flattening the third of the seventh on cords that aren't the one court, it can happen, but it's much it starts to really change the sonic landscape. So in this example, we're just going to stick with the one the three in the five that are major in this key, and eventually we're gonna work on using it all across the neck. Thea thing we're gonna work on in this week's practice video is playing the names of the notes on the D string. So in our e major scale, we're gonna begin by playing d Sharp because that's the seventh note in our scale. So we have d Sharp is on the first friend. He's on the second fret F sharp is on the fourth Fret E Sarriegi Sharp is on the sixth fret A is on seven. Threat be is on the ninth Fret C Sharp is on the 11th threat and we're gonna play. We're going to go up to play D sharp on the 13th friend. Just that we get a note scale. So let's try it again. So we got d Sharp is on. One is on to f Sharp is on four. G sharp is on six. A is on seven bees on nine. C sharp is on 11 and D sharp is on 13. So how we use our right hand if you're playing the bass right hand to make notes happen in terms of the rhythm. There's a few different techniques they can use. Some of these recovered in the arose beginner based program, but we're going to expand on them a little bit. When you're playing sort of funk and rock, it's more likely that you're gonna be using your thumb to get more of a thumping sound like a lower and beef your sound. You can also alternate between your different fingers, like especially between fingers number one and two. When you're playing sort of r and B kind of stuff like that, Um, I like to kind of generally I use my thumb on the lower strings and my fingers on the higher strings. It depends a little bit on how fast you need to go. Between notes. There's a limit to how fast you can thumb. You can go between especially your 1st 2 fingers, a little bit faster than you can between your thumb. Another technique is using sort of what's called palm muting. So when you play the string, you use the beefy part of the back. Your hand commute the strings a little bit, so you get a little bit more of a little less sustained and a little bit more thump. So if you're Doc doing it, you get this kind of ringing open sound. And if you add your the back part of your hand to you that you can kind of make the strings play and then stop much faster, which again, and things like R and B and certain rock things will kind of help tighten up the sound rhythmically. So you get less of, ah, washy sounded more but tires. So when you're playing on, we're playing the notes on the E scale, going up and down. You can try using alternating between, you know, using your fingers or using your thumb. If you like to play with a pick, you could do that as well. Pixar mostly only used in sort of rock and metal because they make a bit of a clacking sound. So in music, where the base is gonna be heard a little bit more up front in the mix, Baseless tend not to use picks because they're just kind of have that Clocky sound. But there's no rules about what you can do in either place. And if you started out by playing the guitar first, you might be a little more comfortable using a pick but encourage you to try out using your fingers in some different styles. All right, I'll see in the practice video. 7. Intermediate Bass Practice 3: We're now gonna play the notes of the E major scale on the D string ass ending. As half notes. One to ready Go. The sharp E f sharp G sharp. A me C sharp D sharp. I would try it again to ready. Go sharp. E f sharp C sharp or a B C sharp T shirt. Now we'll play them ass sending two times in a row without the space in the middle. One to ready. Go sharp. E f sharp, C sharp. A me See. Sharp T shirt. Sure. F sharp. G sharp. Okay, me see Sharp. Be sharp. Now we're gonna play the notes descending from the 13th. Fret one to ready. Go The sharp C sharp B A g sharp f sharp e t shirt Tried again. One to ready. Go G sharp C sharp B A g sharp f sharp e d sharp. Now play them descending two times in a row. One to ready. Go sharp. C sharp. D a sharp f sharp E t shirt. Sharp C sharp D a g sharp. Have sharp e t shirt. Now we'll play them ass ascending and descending four times in a row. One to ready. Go the sharp e f sharp c Sharp Bay P C Sharp T shirt g sharp C sharp p a g Sharp f sharp e t shirt t sharp e f sharp c sharp A E c Sharp T shirt. Okay, sharp C sharp p a t shirt f sharp e d Sharp Be sharp E f sharp G Sharp way B C sharp T shirt G sharp C sharp B A g Sharp F sharp e T shirt. The sharp e f sharp c sharp May E C sharp T shirt G sharp C sharp B A g sharp F sharp E T shirt. 8. Lesson 4: learning all the notes on all the G string: Hi. Welcome back. This is Lesson number four in the intermediate based program for the music coach. In this week's lesson, we're gonna be learning about two really important things. The first is going to be a continuation of what we have been doing, where we're gonna learn all the names of the notes on the E major scale on the G string like we've been doing all the other strings, and that will complete all of the notes on all four strings. And the next part we're gonna be working on is the importance of playing beat one very strongly. There's a great story of the famous bass player Bootsy Collins joining James Brown's funk band in the seventies, and James telling a story about how all he really needed boots you. To be able to do is to be able to play the one and didn't tell them anything more about what it was. He's just like play the one play the one he's yelling at him, and it took a while for Bootsy to realize that all James was saying was it doesn't really matter too much. What else you do inside of a bar if you're playing beat one really strongly as the bass player, and that's true of playing different time signatures. It just helps the listeners ear really lock into the pulse of what's happening. So even if you don't understand how many beats there are in a bar as a as an audience member, you can feel when the band is hitting the one really, really hard. So in order to do that, we're gonna be eventually working on. There's gonna be some exercises in some later practice videos where we're just gonna be playing Beat one really strongly on whatever court were in and on your own. You can do this as well if you take a simple court progression like the one the four, the five So in the key V of the E. A and B and just get with the Metrodome and play really, really softly, just like 12342342341234 so that you're playing it as strongly as you can at the beginning of each bar and in the beginning program if you have taken it. I talked a little bit about how time in music is a little bit like a ball kind of bouncing right in front of you as the beats go by and you can hit the ball directly to imagine a ball kind of landing in front of you and you're hitting with a stick. You can hit the ball directly on top. You can hit it slightly on the front or slightly on the back, and that creates the illusion of time, either going faster if you're hitting it slightly early or slower if you hitting it slightly late. And in this example, what we want to do is hit it dead center. Every single time is close to center as we possibly can get it. Because once you were comfortable with being able to hit a dead center every single time, you then can kind of lean forwards and backwards on the time. Not by accident but on purpose. And that sort of a much more advanced technique. In this week's practice video, we're gonna be learning the names of the notes on the G string, so G Sharp is the first note and it is on the first string. Then we're gonna play the A, which is on the second friends. Then B is on the fourth threat. C Sharp is on the sixth Fret D Sharp is on the a threat, and e is on the ninth fret there will keep going to play F shirt on the 11 g sharp on the 13. So whole thing again, it's gonna be she sharp on one. A is on to the's on four. C Sharp is on six. D Sharp was on seven. E is on eight. F Sharp is on 11. G. Sharp is on 13. All right, I'll see in the practice video. 9. Intermediate Bass Practice 4: We're now gonna play the notes of the E major scale on the G string using half notes, starting with ascending one to ready. Go G sharp or a B C. Sharp, sharp. E F sharp G shirt. Don't try it again. 12 ready? Go G sharp or a B C? Sure, sure, e left sharp. Gee shirt now will try. Ass sending two times in a row without the break. One to ready. Go. She sharp a three c? Sure, sure. Guff sharp. She sure? Sure. A sure. We sure be left sharp. Sure. No. Play the notes descending from the 13th Fret one to ready. Go Sharm f sharp B t shirt. Sure. A sure something again. 12 Ready? Go! She sharp f sharp C sharp. See? Sure. The A J now will play descending two times in a row without the break. One to ready. Go sharp. F sharp. Be sharp, See? Sure. Okay, Sure. Sure. F sharp. B day Sharp. Sharp. The A k Sure now will play ascending and descending four times in a row. One to ready. Go sharp. A c sharp, sharp f sharp. She sure? G sharp f sharp. Free T shirt. Sure. A sharp a c sharp, sharp. Me f sharp. She sure sharp f sharp. Be sure. See? Sure. We may be sure. A be You're sharp f sharp. She sure sharp f sharp B D sharp. See? Sure. A sharp. A sharp F sharp G shirt. Sharp f sharp. A day shirt. See? Sure a. 10. Lesson 5: Learning the chord progression: Hi and welcome back to the music coach. This is a lesson Number five in the intermediate base program. In this lesson, we're gonna be working on learning the whole form of the song that we're using in this program. Now, in all of the different styles were going to be going through in the intermediate based program, we're gonna be using the same form. And by form, I mean the order in which the cords go by. And in order to keep this simple, we've just got ah, song that has two different sections and then a stop at the end so that you can hear with the beginning of the end is now the notes that we're gonna be using are going to be almost all the 14 and the five chord in the key of E. And that's why earlier on the program, I had you learning all the names of the notes in the e major scale, cause we're gonna be just dealing with the e major scale in this program. If you're taking the beginner based program, you may be familiar with me talking about sections of songs as either a or B for example, so that in music when we're in a band, we often talk about sections as a sections B section C sections. Just so it was really clear about what we're speaking about, because many times there are cords that exist in both sections. So we know what we're talking about. Think of them like chapters in a book. So Chapter one is going to be the A section, and in this case, we're gonna start with the note E and then the note A Now where you play that where you play the ease and A's way, we're gonna work on challenging you to play them in different places. But for now, just a we're learning in this practice video. I'm gonna want you to just stick with just playing the e string open just to keep it simple and the A string you could play either on the fifth threat or usually the a string open. The one thing you want to just be aware of it. Don't let both strings be ringing at the same time if you're using to open strengths. So the a section of song is just E 34 a 234 e do 34 a 234 And that will happen a total of four times. And that makes up the notes of the A section The B section is going to start on the note B And for now, when you're first playing this, what I'm gonna get you to do is actually play the be on the second fret of the A string. So it's gonna be the no be for a whole bar than the note day for bar thin the note be again for a whole bar thin the note a again for a whole bar and then be one more time and then we're gonna go down. We're gonna play f sharp for a bar. Then we're gonna play G sharp on our way to a So here's what the B section sounds like. 1234123412341234123412 three, 41234 And that You'll hear that There's a stop in the band as you're playing along. And in this practice video for this lesson, you'll hear that there's drums and guitar accompaniment to play along with and later on in the program, there's going to be a jam room feature which, if you come from the beginner program you'll be aware of. It's just a virtual band of multiple instruments being played at the same time, just guitar, bass and drums and you'll be able to play along with the songs in different styles. And there's an option to have the bass part be turned on or off, depending on which video you're watching. So if you feel like you want to play along and hear the bass part that I'm playing, you can do that. And then as you get a little more comfortable, a little more advanced. If you feel like you don't want to have the base in there because you want to have it feel more like you're playing what it would sound like to play in a real band, then you can play the version that has no basis in it. The other part that's really important in this practice video is learning how to play really solidly on beat one off every court change, and in a previous lesson, I talked a little bit about a story about James Brown and Bootsy Collins, and how important that is now this style were playing in for this practice. Video is more like a ballad style where we're playing quite slowly and the changes we're going by really slowly. But the importance of playing the beat one really, really solidly every time. This is a great way to practice it, so your mind might be tempted to kind of wander and think This is there's not a lot happening whenever I am gonna be doing later, when I might need for lunch trying. This is an opportunity to really try and get your focus to be a strong as possible. So when you're playing the first note, just really focus on when the next bar comes around. Playing right on the beat centered as possible again, we talked about that example of a ball bouncing rate front of you. In this example, you're gonna want to hit straight in the middle every time, the whole way through. And this kind of practice is what leads to making you really solid as a bass player, where you have such confidence of where the time is, and in a band context Unfortunately, most musicians are leaning on the bass player and the drummer for the sense of time in a song. Um, in a perfect world, everyone would have a really solid sense of time. But you're gonna find as you play with other people that, you know, they're gonna tend to turn to you and the drummer to establish where the time is. And so if you really solidly know where it is, people come out of playing with bass players like that and they go. It just felt great to play with that bass player, and they may not even know why. But this is why, Because you have a really solid sense of where the one is on every court. All right, I'll see in the practice video. 11. Intermediate Bass Practice 5: We're now going to start by playing the notes in the A section which are E A E and A. We're gonna play these as whole notes. 12 ready. Go now. Gonna play the notes of the B section which go between B and A and end with F sharp G sharp . A one to ready. Go. Sure. Sharp A. We're now gonna play through the entire progression four times using whole notes. 12 ready? Go. - Okay . Sure. Sharp. A a . Okay, sure. Sharp A. Okay, a be Hey, Be sure. Sharp paid a a a Be OK. Be sure Sharp a 12. Lesson 6: Playing different note values for the progression: hi and welcome back. This is less than six in the intermediate based program for the music coach. In this lesson, we're gonna be learning how to play different note values for the form of the song. So in the previous lesson, what we were working on was just getting a sense of what is the order than the notes go by in the A section and the B section and how to do that using only whole notes. But this time we're gonna be working on is how to mix it up and play them all the notes, half notes or his quarter notes or eighth notes or 16th notes. So if you're not familiar with what the's are, basically how we divide up time and music is with different note values. So whole note lasts the entire bar, and in this case, we're playing in 44 time. So therefore, beats in every bar. So whole note is 1234 If we're playing half note, we're only gonna be having two beats on each note. But because we need four total beats, we're gonna play to half notes in the bar. So in this example, we be playing in E twice in one bar. 1234 We can continue to divide up the note further by playing all 4/4 notes in every bar, for example, 1234 We can also keep dividing further by playing them as eight notes. So then there would be eight notes in a bar. 12345678 and so on. You can go down to 16th as well, but for now, we're kind of gonna look at it all the way down. Just 2/8 notes in the practice video. The way the voiceover works is that there's Onley. It's only gonna be telling you when the chord change happens, and it's going to be up to you to figure out whether you want to play them as half notes or as quarter notes and what I would or is a thoughts for that matter. And what I encourage you to do is to try using this practice video multiple times. Go through it once, play the malls, half notes go through it another time, play them all those quarter notes. Switch up between them. You can try playing the A section is half notes, and the B section is quarter notes and etcetera and change it around. So I left the voiceover kind of not filling up all the space so that you can try it a bunch of different ways and in general, in music. Why, especially as a bass player, varying the rhythmic frequency of the bass part is so important is that the bass guitar is a very, very low in the e que spectrum. So you know, I think of higher pitched instruments like violins or flutes or guitars. Any change in those instruments is really audible to our ears. We hew tend to latch on a high pitch. Frequency is much easier than lower pitched frequencies. So in order to build intensity or to create space when you're playing the bass guitar, your most effective way of doing that is by varying the rhythmic intensity of the baseline that you're playing. So if you're trying to be really sparse and create a lot of space in a song, you're gonna want to play fewer notes. Potentially letting the Marine longer like we've been doing already were playing an entire whole note in one bar and That's all we're doing. If you wanna make a variation so that we can tell the difference between the A Section B section, one of the things you can do is you could play one rhythmic pattern in the A section and a different rhythmic pattern in the B section. So just as an example, you could play whole notes in the A Section 34234 But when we get to the B section, you could go to quarter notes. 12341234 And it instantly creates more energy and more intensity to what's happening. And so I encourage you to play around with this idea again. The most important thing is that, rhythmically, if you're completely solid as you go from whole notes to quarter notes, half notes, etcetera, it's going to feel you're going to be sort of in complete control of the sound. If the quarter notes rush as you tend to play smaller time intervals, most people's instinct is to play too fast. So you'll notice that as you go to a more intense rhythm, you probably need to lean back a little bit on the time not literally lean back, but in terms of your instinct will be to probably play a little bit too fast. So just a little tip, something to keep be aware of. All right, I'll see in the practice video. 13. Intermediate Bass Practice 6: We're now going to start by playing the notes in the A section, which are E a E and A. We're gonna play these as half notes. 12 ready. Go now. Gonna play the notes of the B section, which go between B and A and end with F sharp G sharp. A one to ready. Go. Sure. Sharp A. We're now gonna play through the entire progression four times using half notes. One to ready. Go. - Hey , hey. Have sharp sharp A Okay, A que be a be have sharp, sharp A Okay. Hey. Hey. Sure. G Sharp paid a a a be Be sure. Sharp a 14. Lesson 7: Learn a walking bass line: hi and welcome back. This is less than seven in the intermediate based program for the music coach. In this lesson, we're gonna be learning to dio really common technique that's used in bass, playing more so in things like jazz and early rock. It's called a walking bass line, and if you think back a little bit in music history, the drum kit wasn't always a part of popular music. It became a part of the sort of common fan set up in the 19 twenties and thirties, and before that, a lot of what is now considered popular music came from New Orleans style Dixieland jazz music and in order to make time be understood to dancers. If you were in a marching band or something that was out on the street in a Dixieland band , you needed the lowest instruments to convey mostly quarter notes. And so if you think about modern dance music now, when you think about nightclubs and exact that, there's often what's called four on the floor, which is all the quarter notes in every bar being played by the bass drum Just boom, boom, boom, boom. So bass playing has often had to take on that role before the drum kit was a big part of being on stage all the time. So in this example, we're going to be learning how to play the B section of the song using a walking bass line , which just simply means we're not only just gonna play quarter notes for all the beats in the bar, we're going to have an ass sending pattern so that it's going to sound something like this rather than so. In this case, on the B section of the song are two main cords that go back and forth between our the B chord and the accord. And what I suggest you do is you're gonna play the B chord walking bass parts starting on the seventh fret using your middle finger. And the reason we're gonna use the middle finger is that the very next note is going to be on the sixth threat of the A string so that when we're moving quickly, you don't have to move this finger this way. So it's B on the e string de sharp on the a string be on the seven threat of the A string and then half sharp on the ninth threat of the A string. So here it is again Slowly he is on the seventh fret off the e string d sharp on the sixth Fred of the A string came on the seventh round of the A string after our on the ninth friend of the a string. Now, one more thing I'm gonna suggest is with your right hand. At this tempo, you can play the whole pattern using only your thumb or a pick, because it's slow enough. But in some other styles, which we're gonna be playing in this program, the temple is gonna be much faster. And it's gonna be very hard to play all of the notes cleanly with just your thumb. So what I suggest is using your 1st 2 fingers on your right hand, and in order to play this technique really comfortably, most bases the pickups are going to sit a little bit higher than the e string. So I like to rest my thumb on the neck pickup and use my 1st 2 fingers. And the reason why the thumb is really helpful is it resting? It here kind of keeps the spacing between the fingers even rather than your whole hand floating. So I suggest playing just alternating like first finger, second finger, first finger. So you just walking back and forth. First finger, second finger, first finger, second finger. This pattern kind of helps. Keep everything straight in your head as well. One second finger, first finger, second finger. Now, when we go to the Accord, we're gonna play the exact same pattern, But just starting on the fifth threat. So we're gonna play the A on the fifth threat of the E string. Then we're gonna play C sharp on the fourth fret of the A string. Now, here's what's gonna get a little bit different. When we were learning the notes of the e major scale on the A string, we didn't play the national. We played D sharp. In this case, we're gonna be playing d natural to keep the patterns symmetrical. So technically we're playing the deed. Were playing the d natural, which would not be it's technically we would normally be playing the major seventh of the key were in, but in this case, remind the flat seven. So we talked a little bit about that in some of the earlier videos. This is an example where we're gonna do it through and play a on the fifth thread of the E string z sharp on the fourth fret of the A string D natural on the fifth fret of the A string and then e on the seventh friend of the A stream. One thing I want to show you is using the finger positions that I'm showing you will help, especially when we get playing at higher speeds. So we want to sort of imagine that in this location, this hand position worry in the pointer fingers covering off the fourth fret, the middle fingers covering off anything in the fifth threat, the ring fingers covering off anything in the sixth Threat and the pinky fingers covering off anything in the seventh threat. So that's why we're gonna go, especially cause we're repeating. If we're only played it once and then changing positions to move up or down the neck, we might have a different strategy, but because it's so much repetition, you want to keep it the same way. This also allows you to keep your head up, and you don't have to look down at the neck the whole time, which when you're playing with other people, is really helpful. The more you're able to keep your head up and see what's going on around you, the more you're gonna be able to make eye contact with people in the band and sort of feel the music a little bit better. It's a lot like if you play sports, you know, play soccer or basketball or hockey if you have to. You know, in basketballs case, if you have to look down as you're dribbling the ball all the time, you're not really seeing the other players on the court. Your very easy take the ball away from you. When you're playing music, nobody can take anything from you, hopefully. But it's if you have to be playing like this the entire time, you're not gonna experience the music the same way as if you're able to keep your head up and just be able to play, make eye contact with other people in the band and feel the music and see the audience and all that kind of stuff. All right, keep up the great work and I'll see you in the practice video 15. Intermediate Bass Practice 7: We're now gonna play the walking bass notes on the B court. The notes are the D sharp e f sharp one to ready. Go sharp. Sharp, sharp, sharp. Be sharp, sharp B d sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp. Let's try that again. 12 Ready? Go sharp. Sharp. Be sharp. F sharp. Be sharp, sharp. Be sharp. Sharp, sharp. Sure. De sharp, sharp, sharp, Sharp, Sharp, Sharp. We're now gonna play the walking bass notes on the accord. The notes are a C sharp D and e 12 Ready? Go A c sharp. A sharp, a sharp, a sharp. Okay, sharp, a sharp, a sharp, a sharp Let's try that again. 12 Ready. Go A c sharp a sharp a c sharp, a sharp, a sharp, a sharp, a sharp a sharp. Now let's try playing the entire progression all the way through four times one, two. Ready? Go B d sharp sharp A sharp be sharp f sharp A sharp de sharp sharp A sharp, sharp e f sharp a sharp d sharp. Okay, sharp, sharp, sharp. A sharp de sharp. A sharp, sharp, sharp. A sharp Yeah. Now let's try doing that again. One two. Ready? Go sharp. Sharp. A sharp, sharp, sharp, A sharp e d sharp, sharp. A sharp, sharp e f sharp, a sharp d sharp. A sharp, sharp, sharp, a sharp de sharp, a sharp, sharp, sharp, a sharp. 16. Lesson 8: Learn a 2/4 feel: Hi and welcome back. This is a lesson eight in the intermediate based program for the music coach. In this lesson, we're gonna be learning how to play in a different time feel so we're going to be playing in 24 time, which is sort of more like a boxcar shuffle. You'll hear this a lot more. In country music, it's often played very fast. So there's not a lot going on in the court progression this part the reason why I picked this type of court progression. So we're gonna use the same A and B section from before, because the movement between the cords is quite quick. So we're gonna be playing in the A section between the note E, which is the one of the quarter on. And then we're gonna be playing the fifth note of our chord, which is be so we're gonna be playing a 15 pattern on the E court. Now I'm gonna suggest playing it on the seventh fret partly because we're going again. We're going to be moving so quickly between the cords when we get going. Eventually leader on you can play this in different parts of the neck and move it around. But right now, I suggest putting it here and ominous also suggest that you use your pinky finger on the E on the seven threat of the A string. And the reason is is that here's what the whole pattern is gonna look like. And by playing it with this kind of fingering all in this one location, it's gonna make it faster to move between the first chords in the A section rather than trying to do this is gonna be kind of sloppy going between it. So we're gonna go pinkie finger on the E note on the A string down to the fifth of the chord which is be on the a story on the E Street on the seven threats, we're gonna go 1515 on the first court. Now we get to the a chord. We're going to go 51 on that as well. So we're gonna be going E which is the fifth off the a court down with one of the a chord which is a go there together So e chord a chord e chord a chord Now with your right hand I'm gonna suggest using the technique we were using on the previous lesson, which is rest your thumb on the neck pickup and alternate between fingers number one and two. You can again, like I said last time before you can play this with your thumb or with a pick. But when it gets go up to a certain speed is gonna become very difficult to get between them cleanly. So I'm gonna suggest alternating fingers like that. The other thing about this technique that takes a little getting used to is we're playing an electric bass guitar. But this style of music predates the electric bass guitar, so you may have seen an upright bass. Looks like a giant violin that people play like this. And that instrument was the original base that was string bass that was used in this type of music, and it doesn't have a lot of sustained, so it tends to be very thumb B, and then the note kind of dies out. It's almost more like a kick drum like a pitched percussion, so we're gonna try and imitate that sound because we're playing in the genre and one of the ways you can do that is that right after you play the no, you can let the string up. So rather than holding the note, it's almost the same time that your finger stops plucking it. And then it mutes it. So you get this kind of space between the notes, which is really pleasing to the ear when there's so many notes going by. It's a little bit like if you had a sort of a little kid in your life who has had something really exciting happened to them and they come in and they're like and the way into the bargain than we did this. It's kind of hard on your ears to pick apart what's actually in the story. And in this case we're playing, we're telling a very fast story, but we want to leave a little bit of breath in between rather than way. Wanna leave lots of space in between? Now we get to the B section of the song. What I want you to do is to use the walking bass pattern from the previous week's lesson. So we're gonna play, and at this tempo is going to be about that fast. So we're gonna basically playing. We're sort of playing half notes in this time signature, but I don't want you play at the same speed we were in the previous lessons. So we're gonna be going The the sharp need have sharp a c sharp d e back and forth. Now, the difference is when we get to the turnaround, which is the f sharp g sharp a and then the stop because the song's going by so fast where you're gonna end up in the pattern. Is it the end of the B section before the turn around? You're going to be on this f sharp up here, So we're gonna play the turnaround from this after rather than trying to get all the way down here. So here's what the B section turnarounds going to sound like we're gonna go from me D that ends up with our f sharp g sharp in a up here on the neck. It also gives us a contrast in terms of were building up to the highest energy point of the whole court progression before going back toe are beginning section. If you're feeling a little more comfortable, you want to try to get from here down to the low after G sharp in a you can totally do it or play it somewhere else on the neck. But for starters, in the practice video, you're going to see that I'm gonna finish of the line by switching fingering positions from my pinky finger on the F sharp. Two might avoid your finger on the after and then go point a finger on the T shirt and middle finger on the A. Just again make it a little more less clunky. A little more easy, little or easy under the fingers. All right, keep up the great work, and I'll see you in the practice video. 17. Intermediate Bass Practice 8: We're going to start by playing with one and five notes on the E chord e and B 12 Ready? Go! Let's try that again. 12 Ready? Go! Now let's try playing the five and the one on the Accord, which is E and a 12 Ready? Go! Let's try that again. 12 Ready? Go Now let's play the ones and fives on the entire corporation. 12 ready? Go! 18. Lesson 9: Learn a 6/8 feel: Hi and welcome back. This is less and nine of the intermediate music coach based program. In this lesson, we're gonna be working on playing in 68 time 68 Time is really just a doubling of 34 time, which is more commonly thought of as a waltz. When you think about 1123123123 So probably the most famous song you can think of that's in the 34 times Happy birthday. So happy birthdays in 34 rather than the 44 and 68 is just a doubling up of a waltz. So 123456123456 And in this example, what we're gonna be doing is playing are a section and R B section and act centering different rhythm. Different beats inside. Of the 68 Form, 68 has a feeling of galloping forward. It has a lot of momentum because were so used to the numbers two and four in our rhythmic structures. Six is a really interesting intersection because six and four line up when you get to 12 like there's a bunch of ways that they divide inside of each other. So every two bars, it kind of starts to feel like you're back into 44 and you can superimpose the feeling of four for over 68 It's It's such a versatile time signatures. Why? It's very common. So I would say that the when we're gonna beginning were to be playing the on the E chord in the A section We're gonna be playing on beat one. So 123456 Now we're going to be playing on beat 1123456 And then we're gonna be playing the note A So the net beginning of the next bar will be on once we're gonna be playing on beat one and beat six. So here it is. One time slowly. So we have 123456123456 Now, in the a court, we're just gonna be playing a whole notes. So we put the two together. We have 1234561234561234561 And the note we're playing on beat six of the first bar is G sharps That goes back to knowing our notes on all the strings. When we get to the B section, we're gonna be playing a different a little bit more dense pattern And I'm gonna suggest on the a section you use your thumb Can you give that kind of big, beefy sound? Since we have lots of open space when we get to the B section, we're going to switch to using our second technique, which is arresting your thumb on the neck pickup and using your 1st 2 fingers. And we're gonna play a variation of our walking bass part that we've used in many of the other sections already. So we've got the state will have the same notes on the a chord in the B court. So in the B chord, we've got B d sharp e after and rhythmically we're gonna play on beat one and then we're gonna play on beat 45 and six. So here's what that sounds like. 1234 Vice six like that. 12345 zigs. And what that does is it gives us some mo mentum. So we get this sort of long breath space and then were quickly going to the next chord. And we're gonna keep that pattern the same on the A court as well, Where we're gonna play a C sharp D and on beats 145 and six. So here's what they sound like together. 1234561234561234561 This is gonna sort of stretch your ability to quickly move, especially relocating hand positions back and forth and back and forth. And in the practice video, we're gonna leave out the turnaround just because there's a lot going on in this. So when we play between the a section of the B section, we're just gonna be playing. He 56123456123456123456123456123456 Warning to 56123 Then to the B 456123456123456123 Back to the A section. So rather than going, we're not gonna go to the F sharp and do the turnaround just because this is getting a little bit more advanced and hand position changes air really quick. So I just want you to focus on being really comfortable with playing in 68 and playing a walking bass part of the same time. You're gonna find that 68 may feel a little strange at first. It's a little bit of a nod spinning feeling Once it gets internalized, though, it's really it's a really fun time signature to play in, and it has a lot of forward momentum, so you will tend to find that you're gonna want to rush more than drag in this time. Signature every time has kind of a different feel to it, but 68 because it's got this. It's resolving every so many bars back into 44 kind of in the background of your mind. You're kind of your brain will want toe kind of almost like find the remainder of the division problem if you think about it, is math, but you just sort of have to. It's more like riding a wave. All right, keep up the great work, and I'll see in the practice video 19. Intermediate Bass Practice 9: in this exercise, we're gonna play beat one, beat six and beat one to go between the e chord and a court. So play E on B one g sharp on beat six and a on beat one of the next bar. 123456 e g sharp A Sure sure Shark Bay. Let's try that again. 123456 Sharp Pain. Sure, sure, Sharp A. Now we're gonna play beat 1456 and one of the next bar going between B and a. The notes will be beyond be one d sharp on beat for E on beat five f sharp on beat six a c sharp d and e 123456 Show me, Show me after pay. Be sure after a Let's try that again. 123456 Being me after pain, you're me after pay sure should be paid. He now let's try putting it together by playing both parts on the entire progression. E g sharp A on the A section the d sharp e f sharp A on the B section. 123456 sharp. A Shar pei Sure, Shar Pei being you're being paid a A be after paid 20. Lesson 10: Learn a Funk feel with major and minor thirds: Hi. Welcome back. This is less than 10 off the music Coach Intermediate based program. In this lesson, we're gonna be working on playing a funk bassline at 100 beats per minute. Now, in folk music, we're kind of playing like a bit of a party vibe. So we're gonna take advantage of using the major third on the one chord, which is g sharp as the ass sending part of our baseline. And then we're gonna flip it and use the minor third, which is G natural on the descending part of our life. So here's an example. What that'll sound like on the one court. 2341234123 So this gives the baseline a bit of a shape. And it's something to kind of work off some of the other players in the band. When you're playing with other people in the B section, we're going to use our walking bass line again like we've used in the to four time and in the 68 time. So starting on the be on the seven threat, we're gonna play the the sharp e f sharp a c sharp D what kind of gonna walk back and forth between those two. Now, if you want to get a little funkier and again, just a reminder to use your finger technique on the B section. You can use eighth notes, or you could use a combination of quarter notes, quarter notes and eighth notes together just to give it a little bit more momentum. But when you're first starting out, you can just stick with the regular quarter notes. When you get to the turnaround through the F sharp g sharp a part you can gonna go. Either way, the line is gonna end because it's a walking bass part up on this F sharp. You can continue to use up to the 12th threat of the A string, or you can try and get down and use the F sharp as a turnaround. Now, in an actual musical context, I would sometimes go one way, sometimes go the other way. So it's good to practice both when you're trying to build a lot of energy up to a point where there's going to be a drop down. I would try and play the higher one, and you kind of want to save it almost. Um, maybe the end of the song of the end of someone solo. Places like that. A lot of musical devices in terms of building up energy you want toe, think of them as, like, sort of special occasion things you don't want overuse them because then when you bring them out, they don't have as much power. S o I kind of keep that in mind. The higher part of the base will tend to cut through a little more and will tend to be it feel a little bit louder. Eso When I'm trying to really bring up the energy, that's where I'm going. One example would be if someone's taking a solo and I'm accompanying as a bass player the first time through the form I wouldn't want to play high up on the neck because it draws attention away from the soloist and probably they're going to be in a lower dynamic range in the first part of their solo as they get towards the end. If they're building up to some kind of big crescendo when the band is kind of coming up behind them, toe kind of build up the dynamics with them, then I would want to play up higher on the register to kind of build ups. Intention with them. So they just a couple things to think about and it funk music You You often have this sort of cooking sound that's going along, but there's can be great dynamics. Things don't have to be loud and bombastic all the time. They can go from quiet toe loud and back, and just a reminder it was. I mentioned it earlier in one of the lessons just about the importance of the one and the story about James Brown and Bootsy Collins and just how important it is to be super solid on Beat one, especially in front music, because it's so. It's structured and rigid, not in a bad way, but it has, like a lot of structure to it. The last piece I want to show you is some places in this baseline where you can add some fills or some extra parts. So in the A section he was kind of our base part. You can kind of add some rhythm, especially if you're thumbing it to make it a little bit more dynamic and because Once you're comfortable with the names of the notes in the East scale, you can play certainly like the pentatonic scale on the ninth fret or the part that leads into it from the seventh. Fret and fill in the space. You can kind of hear where the spaces space right there, Base right there so you can kind of hear where there's a spot to add a little bit to it. The one thing you want to keep in mind, though, is if there is a singer and there's a lot of stuff going on in the vocal part, you may want not want to be too flashy in that spot because you want to draw attention away from the singer or the soloist. But there's just some things you can think about in the B section. It's pretty dense. There's not a lot of room for any fills in there, but in the A section I'd encourage you to kind of fill up that space. All right, keep up the great work I don't see in the practice video 21. Intermediate Bass Practice 10: in this exercise. We're gonna practice playing. Beat one on all the court changes throughout the song. 12 Ready? Go. Hey! Okay, Okay. Okay. Have sharp. Okay. Okay. Okay. Hey, a sharp A. Okay, A Hey, Sharp. Okay, Now we're gonna play the a section of song using G sharp as the major third ass ending in the line and Jean Natural as the minor Third descending in the A Section 12 Ready? Go! Shar pei shar pei shar pei sharp A Let's try that again. 12 Ready. Go. Shar pei shar pei shar pei sharp A We're now gonna play 1/4 note walking base over the b section of the song. The notes will be B d sharp e f sharp on the first chord and a c sharp d e on the a chord. 12 Ready? Go. Let's try that again. 12 Ready? Go! Now it's put both parts together in the a section of the song play the G sharp on the ass sending section and the G natural in the descending section And in the b section of the song used the quarter note walking bass line 12 Ready go! Shar pei Sharpay! Sharpay Sharp. A sharp, sharp, sharp A a a sharp a shar pei Shar pei shar pei Sharp pain a sharp, a sharp Sharpay. Sharpay A A. 22. Lesson 11: Learn a Rock feel: hi there. And welcome back. This is less than 11 in the intermediate music coach based program. In this lesson, we're gonna be working in the rock music genre, so we're gonna be playing at 100 beats per minute playing Ah, very straight ahead rock pattern. Now, if you've got any experience playing rock music, you probably know that the base tends to play down towards the lower register a lot. It's really low end heavy, and you're trying to lock in with the kick drum a lot when you're playing along with the drummer and the kick drum patterns air usually fairly straight ahead there. Usually, you know, a lot of stuff like on beat one and then sometimes like a one and pattern as well. So in the practice video, you're gonna notice that the drum part is very, very straight ahead. It's easy to lock in with. We're gonna also work on in the practice. Video is a lot to do with dynamics. Rock music doesn't always get thought of as being a super dynamic style of music, but in my opinion, there's a real opportunity, especially is the bass player to affect how intense the song is by changing up how loudly or softly and how densely and how sparsely you're playing so dense and sparse has to do with how many notes you're cramming into a bar and allowed in Soft is pretty obvious, like Are you playing at full volume are really digging in? Are you playing really lightly? Another side of rock music is whether you're playing with a pick or whether you're thumbing , and also especially whether your palm muting we talked a little bit about this earlier in another lesson. But deadening the strings a little bit gives you a little more definition rather than just having to be wide open so you can play around with the difference between those two things . So he was just an example of in the a section of the song. If I was trying to play really sparsely and quietly, I'd be playing probably with a palm mute like 234 234 And if I was going to try and make it a little bit busier Way can add some fills in the same place. We talked about having them in the funk version of the song that we're playing in the previous lessons. So there's a great little box pattern in the major key right between the seventh and ninth . So playing like 7979 on the Eastern and a string, um, again you can play fills on the higher strings on a base. It tends to really stick out quite a lot. So especially in rock music, the base tends to be in the very supportive role rather than being out front. Where's and funk music, you can kind of get some slaps and pops a little more advanced technique, but you can play a little more up the neck as well. Nothing I want to talk a bit about was the tone you used. So in rock music, there is often a lot of distortion in the guitars. Ah, lot of bass amps like this one right here has the ability to have distortion on it. And if I turn it on for you, you can kind of hear difference. And now it sounds kind of fun and funky and cool, and you can control how much distortion and, you know, like that's the full on. That's the maximum amount that has but one thing I found is that if there's already distorted guitars, the distortion on the base kind of makes the base invisible. It's sort of like a nice idea of frequency overlap. So when you get to things that are too sounding distorted, your ear will tend to block out the noise. Essentially, it's a little bit like if you've been on an airplane, when the airplane first takes off, you go. Wow, the engines were really loud and you can hear them. And then after about an hour in the air, you can't even hear the engines anymore. So distortion kind of works the same way. So, ironically, I find that playing with the distorted sound Onley works well when it's there's no other distorted instruments plant playing. So sometimes you might hear band where there's a loud section. Maybe you're playing sort of rockabilly or rock kind of sounding stuff with a piano player where there's no guitar player or where the guitar player has a really clean tone and then flipping on the distortion helps your sound really stand out. Just something to be aware of most of these amps, you know, you can either use a distortion pedal or this one has a foot switch that comes with it so you can turn it on and off whenever you need to use it. You can also play around with using different note values. We've talked about this earlier, and some other lessons going between playing half notes, whole notes, quarter notes, eighth notes and 16th notes. Um, and again just thinking about in what section? How How much do you want? How much density do you want rhythmically and what's happening So Rockies? It tends to be very straight, so you may want to play a lot of, you know, quarter notes like and again leaving a little bit of breath in between, so you can also mix in some eighth notes, just allowing it to breathe. So whenever you're thinking about playing a repetitive part on the base, you always want to make sure that you've got something that you can remember enough to repeat it. Keep up the great work, and I'll see in the practice video 23. Intermediate Bass Practice 11: start by playing the notes of the A section sparsely using very few notes and then play much more densely in the B section. 12 Ready? Go now try doing the opposite. Play densely in the A section and sparsely in the B section. 12 Ready? Go now try playing the A section sparsely and quietly and the B section densely and loudly . 12 Ready? Go now Try the opposite. Play the A section sparsely but loud and the B section densely and quiet. 12 Ready, Go! 24. Lesson 12: Learn a Ballad feel: hi and welcome back. This is less than 12 of the intermediate based program with music coach, and this is our final lesson. So congratulations on getting all the way to the end. And I hope you've really enjoyed what we're working on so far. And remember to take advantage of the jam room stuff at the end of this program where you can either by video or download the MP three audio off support music in all the different genres and 24 and and funk and ballot and rock and all that kind of stuff and playing along with it. You know, the best thing is gonna be able to get out there and play with some other people. But obviously, if you don't have anybody yet that you can jam along with, use the jam room a lot on by encourage you to take a lot of risks and try things, especially when you're practicing on your own, you're only gonna add new things and you're playing when you try them and get them underneath your fingers. And it's the same way for all of us. The last one of the things I wanted to bring up was, You know, I get trapped in this to you know, you go on Facebook or YouTube and you see all these videos of people. Just what you see all the time is just people being amazing. And what you don't see is that you know, the hours and hours of practice that went into that for them because that would make a terrible YouTube video watching something, trying figure something out on their own. So just keep that in mind that, you know, when you're seeing somebody do something you can't do they worked on it, you know? It didn't they weren't born able to play that way. They put in the time in the practice, and you can learn how to do it as well. So in this week's lesson, what I wanted to cover is how to play in the style of a ballot. Now, a lot of the play along tracks from the earlier weeks like Weeks one through seven, were all at 60 beats per minute, and the backing track is, ah, sort of a ballad style with drums and guitar, and the reason I say this for the last. Some people might think you know why is the slowest, easiest thing to play at the end, and it's true that ballads are slow, but they're often the hardest thing to play well and also really for the base, especially because the dynamics tend to be quieter. Eso I want. The first thing I want to talk about is adjusting your volume. So if you're playing with a band and you've got your volume set for a rock song and then the very next song is a ballad, you're gonna want to adjust the volume either on your AMP or on your base, because chances are everything's gonna come away way, way down. And if you just kind of hammer in on the first beat at the same volume as you were up on the Rock song, you're gonna stick out so I like to. Every base is a little bit different, but this one has to volume control knobs. If you think about you know wherever 10 is on your you know, wherever the line lines up on your base with, you know, this is full, full volume 10. I would go down to like seven or six just right away. If I was playing a ballot. It's always easy to kind of bring up the volume later, but you can hear the difference. Brings it down quite a bit so that it's gonna I'm gonna fit in dynamically right away with what's going on. So it's just the first thing to think about when you're switching to a ballad. Bring the volume down. It's always easy to bring it up later. Um, the other thing is, Is playing in time becomes way more important when you're playing slowly than when you playing fast, because a whole bar is gonna take a lot longer to go by. So if you're slightly rushing or slightly dragging on hitting the one really well, it's really noticeable because it takes a while for the next beat, one to come around. So like we talked about with time being like a ball that's landing right in front of you, you want to hit it exactly where you want to. You may want a push and pull on the time a bit, but make sure you're doing it on purpose and not cause you're not sure where it ISS because the gap in time it's so much longer like a 60 beats per minute, it's going to be more like 12341234 You want to make sure that your hitting it really the way you want to hit it every time and the other thing is sort of has to do with sparseness and where you're playing some ballads. If you know if you got a piano player and they're playing a ton of notes and it's like a piano feature, you're gonna want T rhythmically stay out of the way. Same if it's a guitar feature or some other instrument, you can't their little moments to kind of step to the foreground in a ballot, and you really want to make sure that you're doing it intentionally and sort of carefully. Are you almost think of, Ah, playing a ballot is like handling Ah, delicate little animal or something like that. You gotta be very carefully can just grab it and pick it up like you can with rocks on our funks on. So these are just a couple things that you're gonna want to think about when you're getting into playing ballots and for the practice video. This time, you're just gonna head into the jam room so the jam room is filled with above all the different styles that we've covered so far in the program. And the ballad Play Along is in there, and you can use either the version that has me playing the bass. Or you can use the version that has me not playing the bass. So some people find it easier to feel like they're playing along with me. Other people find it's easier to just It's distracting because they're not playing exactly the same thing. So I encourage you to use both and the jammers air now downloadable so you can download them as MP three files and put them on your phone. Take them with you, play them in whatever practice space that you have to work on. So I wanted to say a big thank you and congratulations. Thank you for joining the music coach program, and I hope you've really enjoyed it. And I wish you all the best on your musical journey and keep playing, and I look forward to seeing you again soon 25. Jam Room: 24 time (Full Band): 26. Jam Room: 24 time (No Bass): 27. Jam Room: 68 time (Full Band): 28. Jam Room: 68 time (No Bass): 29. Jam Room: Ballad (Full Band): 30. Jam Room: Ballad (No Bass): 31. Jam Room: Funk (Full Band): 32. Jam Room: Funk (No Bass): 33. Jam Room: Rock (Full Band): 34. Jam Room: Rock (No Bass): okay? 35. 7 key steps to starting a band: And right now we're going to talk about how to start a band with either your friends or family. Playing music with other people is truly the richest experience you can have in music. So it's a great goal when you're just starting to learn an instrument to try and bring more people in. It's the same. If you play a sport you're gonna wanna do with your friends, you're gonna wanna do with your family and social time, a way to really express yourself. So unfortunately, for a lot of people they have no experience with how to put a band together, how to make it function properly. In a way, a bands no matter who's in it, is like a little mini tribe. And there are dynamics between people and how people communicate to each other that are important. There's also some accountability which is great to learn in terms of if you're deciding on some goals, like we're gonna learn the songs, everybody has to go out on their own and learn their own thing and come back and be accountable to the group that they're in. The first step is to choose what instruments and what kind of banded is you'd like to have. Some big decisions that you're going to want to make right away is, what do you want to have a drum kit, for example, depending on the style you want to play. Now, a drum kit is an amazing instrument, but you may not have the physical space or the ability in terms of volume to play music that loud. And a full drum kit also influences. For example, if you're gonna play an acoustic guitar with a drum kit, it's very limited how loud you can play on the drum kit without having to have the guitar amp through a guitar, through an amplifier. So that's sort of 1 first big decision you have to make. Then beyond that, you might want to think about what kind of style of music you're moved by and what kind of instruments maybe are already in that style of music. So if your favorite band is made up of, you know, electric guitars and bass and drums. And it's big and it's allowed us raucous, and that's what you wanna do. Then you probably want to organize yourself in a way where those instruments are part of the picture. But if on the other hand, you're like, I really like, you know, classical woodwind instruments. You know, I like flute and clarinet and oboe. And so those are things to think about and finding friends and family who can share a common vision of what kind of music you want to do is your first step. Once you're into choosing instruments, it's important to make sure that they're divided up in a way that will allow you to make good music and have everybody's voice be clearly heard. So you may find out that you've got two people who really want to play guitar and you might be able to make that work. What has to happen then is you have to adjust what parts everybody's playing so you can hear each other properly. But you may decide that, you know, somebody else really wants to play the guitar and I kinda wanna play the guitar, but I've always thought about playing the bass or I've always thought about playing the saxophone. And it's a chance to challenge yourself and move into new instruments. The great thing about learning second, third instruments, if you already know one, is that all of the musical knowledge that you've gained on the first instrument comes with you to the second one. So it's never really like starting over. And the more instruments you learn, the easier they get to learn, because you're just taking more and more information with you to the next experience. Just like with your own personal practice habits. Having goals as a band is really important. And every band has different goals, even professional ones. So if you may have a goal where you say, I really want to be able to play at a talent show at my school in a year. Like we, that's our, that's our goal, that's what we wanna do. Or I want to be able to play at this fundraiser or maybe the goal is I just want us to be able to once a month get together and perform just for ourselves and the songs that we really, really like. Or we want to be able to play together on holidays. Or there's certain colony music we really want to be able to play whatever those goals are. It's important to just have them be clear and have everyone understand what they are so that everyone can draw their focus and attention towards getting yourself to those goals. It's also important to make time to reset your goals when you get to where you wanna go, don't just stop. Go. Well, now that we're here, where do we wanna go next? Whether you're in an amateur band or professional band, it doesn't really matter. Scheduling time for your own practice is equally important as scheduling time for the bands practice. One of my teachers has a great saying that I love. He always told me, said, a rehearsal is not where you go to learn your part. It's where you go to learn everyone else's part. So in that sense, when you come into a rehearsal, you should already know the parts that you're going to play, at least to a general level so that you can see how they plug in and go together. And for that to happen, you'll need to schedule time on your own to practice. And generally speaking, the ratio of rehearsal time to practice time is somewhere around two to one. So if you're planning on having a half an hour rehearsal, you're probably going to need a half an hour to an hour of total practice time to make yourself ready for that rehearsal. And change a little bit depending on, you know, you might choose a song that you actually really know. So you don't really need to do too much to get ready. But as a general rule, you want to keep that in mind. Scheduling time for the band to rehearse, and also picking a place for that to happen is the next key step. The location is really important because you're going to want to be in a place where you can make the amount of noise that your band is going to be making comfortably so that you're not disturbing your neighbors or other people who aren't involved in your musical project. So a couple options are, you've heard of the classic ones. You know, garages can be great if you have one because it's usually a separate from the house enough that you can make a little more noise of the bothering people. Basements tend to be pretty good for the same reason because most of it is underground. If you are in an urban area, it can be very challenging because so many apartments and buildings are close together. But there are rehearsal rooms that you can rent by the hour, and they often have everything you need in them to play. They'll have a full drum kit. They'll have guitar amps, base amps, they'll have keyboards, even they'll have a sound system with microphones if you want to sing. And you pay by the hour. So you sometimes pay about $15 an hour and you just walk in and you play as loud as you want. They're usually soundproofed and made in a way that you can play as loud as you want. So it's a good option. And if you have three or four people together, if everybody chips in a little bit of money and you're doing it once a week or once every two weeks. It's not that expensive and it's a nice option. Scheduling the time for rehearsal is similar to scheduling your own practice time. You're going to want to check in with everybody about what their schedules are and when ideal times r. And depending on what stage of life you're in, this is going to have a huge difference if you're planning on starting a band with a bunch of 16 year-olds like year 16 and all your friends are that age. You have different schedules than somebody who's in their forties or fifties. So you want to think about when it's going to make the most sense for everybody and when it can be convenient, where everybody can be present and focused and enjoy the process and not be waking up too early, going to bed too late, trying to rush there in a real hurry. Inevitably, in any kind of tribal situation or band situation, there are gonna be conflicts. People have strong opinions about music and about their own parts, and about how the music should go and should fit together. So it's good to have a plan in place for how to resolve those conflicts. And when he combined this plan with a general sense of an agreement between people about how to communicate in conflict, this can alleviate a lot of unnecessary tension. A really simple example I'll give you is, if you're playing a part that I don't like and I communicate to you in a way that implies that I'm also not liking you at the same time. You're going to feel defensive as soon as I talk, even if my eyes, even if you agree with the idea, you're probably going to defend yourself because you're like, Hey, you're telling me you don't like me. And this is just primal human to human stuff. So learning how to talk about the music without talking about the person is a really important skill. And if you think about the language you're using, you can really become skilled at this and say, I'm feeling like the part that you're playing isn't fitting together with this other part over here. As opposed to, I don't like what you're playing because it's not working with this. So I'm talking about the same thing, but you can probably feel even through the video, there's a different energy to it. And how everyone communicates has to be carefully negotiated so that everyone feels safe and they can really express themselves clearly. Because ultimately you got to remember that making music together as a very vulnerable experience. And people need to feel like they can take chances and that it's safe. And one last thing, also, remember to take the time to really cheer each other on, makes a huge difference if somebody speaks up about something that you're doing in a positive way, this doesn't have to be manufactured or phony. But if you hear someone playing something and you're really digging in and it's like you're feeling it may start to tell them like that's a great, you're like you're playing that amazing and like what you came up with his sounds great. And I'm really digging in. This kind of positive real reinforcement just creates this sense of everybody is rowing the boat together in the same direction, which is part of what makes playing in a band feel so amazing. You feel like you're part of a team and everybody's working together towards the same goal. So learning how to do that is also important. You may come from a cultural background or a family background where there just wasn't a lot of encouragement. So I know you have to use something that sometimes you have to cultivate and learn how to do. But it's really important and it makes a huge difference in the sense of togetherness that you have in a band. 36. General gear guide: Music coach. And this is a bonus feature where I'm going to talk about some general tools that every instrumentalist should have with them. They're not very expensive, but they're gonna make a huge difference to the quality of your practice. And also if you're rehearsing with other musicians, the things I got in front of me are two different music stands and a tuner and a metronome. So first, let's talk about the music stands. There are two basic types. This one is a solid music stand. It does fold up. They're a little bit more expensive, but there are a lot more practical to use, especially if they're just going to live at your house. I'd recommend spending a little more money getting something that's a little more durable. Because the other option are these wire foldable stands, which are great for traveling with. But because they're not solid, things can fall through the screws and everything on them are usually a little bit cheap and it'll sometimes bend easily. So the difference in price, these wire ones are going to be sort of 20 to $30. These are going to be closer to a $100. But in the long run, I recommend getting a good solid music stand. If you're going to be in one location. A chromatic tuner. If you're playing an instrument where pitch is going to be an issue, which is almost every single instrument, with the exception of the drum kit and the piano. You're gonna need to know whether you're playing sharp or flat and how to make adjustments. And the only real way to do that is with a chromatic tuner. These will cost you around $30 and they have basic functionality. They take a AAA battery. One nice thing that's happened in the last few years is most apps stores for smart phones have some kind of a free tuner. And even for like a dollar or two, you can buy a more advanced version. So if you don't feel like having a physical one, I have owned these for a long time, so I've got them. You can download something to your smart phone and make sure to use it to be constantly checking in to see where you're at or you playing sharp or flat and certain registers. And a note for guitar players, you might think that a guitar tuner, which is something that's sold in stores, would be the right thing for a guitar or bass. And in fact, the guitar tuner isn't really useful at all because it's always checking to see what string you're on. It's trying to figure out, are you on the sixth string, on the fourth string. And we actually want us to be able to know is that string I'm playing, playing the right note. The other reason this is important is if your guitar gets really at a tune, a guitar tuner won't really give you a relative sense of where you are. You'll have to get a close before it's even usable. So I don't even recommend ever even buying a guitar tuner. Metronomes track time. And this one looks like the same as the chromatic tuner, but it basically is set, you can set it to how many beats per minute. Which a simple way to think of it as 60 beats per minute is like the second hand on a clock, because it's 60 clicks in a minute. And if you had a 120 beats per minute, you'd have two clicks for every second. A good metronome, we'll have a couple of important features. You want to make sure you get one that has the ability to plug headphones into it. Especially if you're a drummer, because the speaker on this is never going to be loud enough for you to hear it while you're playing drums or even to be honest, playing most instruments. So you want something with a headphone adapter and you also wanna make sure that you have something where you can easily change the tempo. So they all have the ability to change the tempo, but some of them will go up in increments of three or four. Just make sure it's something that you can adjust the tempo evenly. And last but not least, it's important to have one that you can clearly, visually see as well, that it's easy to see the display because sometimes when you're playing, you're going to want to just check and check on visually where you're at in terms of the time. And much like the tuner, you can download these off of most apps stores, there's almost always a free one. Sometimes they're not great. But for a dollar or two, you can upgrade and get a more advanced metronome, which will work great. And this is going to cost you about $30. So a dollar or two on an app store to upgrade the free version is often what I recommend for my students. 37. How to create a furtile musical home: I'm Todd, the music coach, and welcome to this video where we're going to talk about how to create a fertile ground for a musical home to grow. I'm sure that you've had the experience of walking into someone else's house for a party or a holiday. And it seems like everyone is musical, like people picking up guitars and sitting at pianos and singing along. And it just seems like it's all natural and it's happening and it's really beautiful. And you may have wondered like, how does that happen? How do those homes happen? And unfortunately, you might think, well, those people are, that's a musical family. And their, their musical, and I'm not, and that's the reason why we don't have that. And that's a complete and total lie. The truth behind it is that those people found a way to create a fertile ground for people to feel safe and express themselves and challenge themselves and set goals so that they could play music together. And they probably did all of this without even really knowing that that's what they were doing. So I'm going to lay it out free, explain how this actually happens. So in my family home, there were no musicians. My parents loved music, but they didn't play. I didn't grow up watching people play. And both my brother and I ended up being professional musicians. So you might go, How did that happen? And there were a lot of things that my parents did that I think they didn't even realize that they were doing. One really simple thing is we listened to music and we talked about what we liked about it. And hearing them share that with me was really invaluable. And we took long car rides. We would listen to, I know that my parents, there was an oldies stations that they really liked, which was like fifties and sixties rock. And we had dialogues about like who is that artists and when did you first hear that? And they would share stories with me about where they were when they heard that song or what kind of meaning it had to them. So a great way to set this up for yourself is in your own home, you can initiate it. And a great way to do it is to allow everyone a chance, even if you've got little people in your life to share a piece of music that they feel moved by. And feeling moved by music can be all sorts of different feelings. It doesn't have to just make B the song makes me feel happy. It can be this song makes me feel sad or the song makes me feel like agitated, or it's just what you're looking for, something that makes you feel something. And a good forum for that is to go to the living room and decide that we're going to we're going to spend a half an hour doing this and everybody gets to pick one song. You might wanna set some ground rules where, you know there's not gonna be any songs with any swearing editor inappropriate, whatever for your family, you feel as appropriate. And then while you put your song on, everybody agrees to be in silence and really listening. And this just developed so much good ability, not just for music, but just the ability to sit for three to five minutes at a time and really listen to what's going on around you is such an important life skill that will really have a huge impact on everyone. And you might want to set some other very simple ground rules, which is, it's like the everything I learned, I learned in kindergarten, which is if you don't have anything nice to say, you don't have to say anything. It's better not to say something really negative. Because. People are sharing something that means something to them. And learning how to have that dialogue is important to be able to say, it's not to my taste, instead of it's socks or I don't like that song or it's the same way that we teach each other how someone prepares a beautiful meal for you and it's something you don't like to eat. You can talk to them about that in a way that's not going to hurt their feelings in music is the same way. You can then expand on this game by adding in some other artistic elements. One really fun one that I like to do is do the same thing, put on a piece of music. Everyone gets to bring something that they feel moved by. And everybody just takes a piece of paper and during that time, they just draw or sketch something that they feel is connected to their experience of that music. And then everybody can share that with each other and talk about, well, I shaded this thing this way because it made me feel good to think of a cloud, or it made me think of a tree, or it made me think of this or that. And again, it's, it's an exercise in not being critical. It's just expressing yourself through art while listening at the same time. And another variation of it can be to do the same thing of having a listening circle and have everyone write down an idea for a short story. Something that they either through the lyrics, if it has that kind of thing in it or if it's instrumental, just talk about ice. You know, I'm seeing a story about somebody walking their dog in the woods when I hear this. And again, as long as no one is being harsh with each other about it, it's a really neat window into how we all experience music differently. Making time to watch movies that are about famous musicians are famous music is also another great way to help get a really fertile ground for music going in your own home. There are tons of great documentaries about all sorts of things, about the backup musicians in Motown or you know, even about famous composers like Mozart and Johnny Cash and Ray Charles. You can watch and discuss and talk about what their music, the music of that artist, or what the story of that musician, how it, what you thought about it and what it meant to you. The more you share your own experience with other people about how music moves you, the more it grows inside of you and more passion that you have for it with all of us traveling and car so much these days. Another great musical fertilization that you can do is to plan on having music on car trips and really having people listen for a lot of us. Actually, the best stereo that you're going to own is going to be in your car. Car stereos are usually quite high-quality, So it's a great way to experience music. One thing that's happened, unfortunately, as we've gotten into more individual devices of smartphones and mean it started with Walkmans and CD players and things like that is we tend to experience music isolated. Each person will have earphones in and be in their own world experiencing music, which in a way is great. It's nice to have some personal time with music. But one of the things we've really lost is the connection and the sharing of our joy with each other. So trying to set that up on, on travel, times together with your family can be great or with your friends and just talking about and sharing it and letting everybody have a turn with the stereo and okay. 38. How to create a sucessfull practice routine: Hi, I'm Todd, the music coach. And in this video, I'm going to be talking about how to set yourself up for long-term success when you're practicing music and learning an instrument. The biggest challenge I've found, not only for me personally, but for most of my students. It's not the technical requirements of whatever instrument they are playing, or even how much innate ability that they have when they start. The biggest challenge people have with consistently making progress in music has to do with their practice habits. And for most of us, we have a negative reaction to that idea. Even practice habits, discipline these things. We feel like we get tense about it. And adjusting your relationship to those ideas will open you up to being able to fully embrace all of your abilities and really take giant leaps forward in your playing. I know for me personally, I realized early on I had to change my relationship to what I thought practicing meant, how it worked, what I thought discipline meant. And I had to really re-frame in my mind what it meant to play an instrument. This has a lot to do with where the way we're, we're perceive learning a musical instrument and society unfortunately is largely negative. You've probably seen this mostly what you get fed in the outer surroundings is that some people have talent and some people don't have talent. And when you go to a concert and you watch someone play, you think, well, they're just have it. And that's why they sound amazing. And this doesn't in any way reflect reality. It may be that they had some natural ability, but there's thousands of hours that went into what you're seeing when you see someone performing in a professional context. Then the question becomes, well, how did they get from not playing it all to having the discipline and the patients and learning the right things to get all the way through that process. And although musicians will give you a variety of different answers, I think the best way to do it is to find a healthy way that's realistic and is repeatable. So what first key to having real success in your practicing is to set goals. Because like anything else in life, if you have an idea of where you wanna go, It's a lot easier to tell where you are in that journey. Rather than just a loose idea of like, I want to learn how to play this instrument. And if you have that thought and it just sort of dissipates out into the air. When things get difficult, you're more likely to quit because it's like, where am I in the middle of that journey? As opposed to you could say, my goal is I want to, for example, I want to play the piano and I want to learn how to play these three songs in the next year. And he may have no idea how you're gonna do it, but even just having that goal is going to help propel you along. And when you hit rough patches, you can check in with yourself and your goals and you go, Am I doing the things that I need to get to my goal? A good goal to think about when you're playing a musical instrument is how to get to a place where you can make music with other people. Music throughout human history has always been a community event. It's only in the last few 100 years that it's sort of moved into conservatories and into school settings. And we've isolated from each other. And somehow we've lost the idea that the point of it is that you can actually make music with another real life human being. So my suggestion, if you're not quite sure what goal to set, I'd pick a goal that involves eventually playing with other people. Whether that's joining a band or just playing with a friend and going like my friend also plays the guitar and I want to be able to play the same song so we can play together. Another really big key to long-term success with practicing is finding a consistent time of day that you're the best frame of mind and being to practice in. And this is different for everybody and which is why there is no one answer of everyone should practice like at five o'clock or I mean, that's not helpful for anybody. We all have different lives and different schedules and commitments. I suggest you experiment around with it a bit. I found for me personally, I feel the best practicing early in the morning. And for me it's just I find my mind is very clear and relaxed and I haven't been sort of inundated with emails and phone calls and other commitments. And I set aside a small amount of time, not every day of the week, but four or five days a week. Because I'm a professional musician, I have to work on a lot of things, but for you it might be one or two times a week and I block off that time and when I'm there, I'm as present as I can be and I'm working on my goals to get me closer to where I wanna go next. Some things to think about, about when the time of day is going to be, when you're gonna practice, are make sure you have had enough sleep. So waking up too early if you're going to bed too late is not going to be ideal. Make sure that you've had something to eat. If you're really hungry, like if you get home from work or school and you're starving, it's not going to be ideal for your nervous system in your body to be in a calm place. So make sure that you've had something to eat. But you also may find you don't want to play right after you eat something because you might feel a bit full. So these are things to think about about where in your day you're going to plan to have your practice time. When it comes to practicing, quality is so much more important than quantity. Unfortunately, you may have even already heard from other music teachers that you gotta practice for an hour every day or half an hour every day or so many hours per week. And this information isn't really helpful because the quality of the time you're putting in is what's really important. If you were to take the same approach to eating food and say, well, the way you get nourishment and your body is you sit at the dinner table for 45 minutes. It's missing so much of the point. There are so many other factors. Are you eating too much or you are not eating healthy foods? Are united eating at all? Are you just sitting there and practicing music is the same. You can sit down with your instrument for an hour and not only make no progress, you can actually regress because if you're reinforcing bad habits, then you're not actually you actually making your playing worse. So what I like to tell my students is focus on the quality. Five minutes of really focused practice can change your life forever. I know for me it's that way. I had this. I had to start out by getting the routine working first rather than trying to figure out what I was going to even practice. So picking a small thing and being consistent with it. And when you're there, challenging yourself to do a little more of it each time is the best way to go. Now in life, things are gonna come up. You're gonna get sick. You're going to have to travel places. You're going to have holidays, all of these things. And it's important to be flexible with your practice routine and to think a little bit into the future. And so for me, for example, when I'm planning, when I'm going to be practicing, i'm taking into account some of those factors, the ones that I can control anyway. So like if I know that I've got family coming to visit and I'm going to be busy entertaining people and doing things. I will suddenly is put my practice routine on hold to give my full attention to that. Knowing that when the time is right, I'm going to come back and be fully focused rather than trying to ram in practice time when you're distracted with other things. The same can be true of getting sick, having a cold and flu, something like that. I would say it's good to have a break from things. And always when you're practicing, you want to be in a good frame of mind and being. Because you're not just practicing musical information, you're training your body to have a relationship with the gaining of musical language. And if your body is in a frenetic state, every time you do that, when you go to touch your instrument, it literally will reset your brain to feel anxious and upset. Now the other side of that is that if you can train yourself to be calm and presence every time you're with your instrument. Pretty soon after a while, you'll just go over and pick it up and your body will come into a calm place. Before I practice, I like to take a moment and before I even touched the instrument or put it together and just see if I can get myself. I sometimes close my eyes and take a few deep breaths and try and get myself into a very calm place because I want to reinforce that with everything that I'm learning. If you don't have any experience with meditation, I highly recommend that through whatever form you can find, you find a good practice that's small and to the point where you can get yourself into a calm and relaxed place before you start. Another key element to actually getting towards your goals is to make sure to always be challenging yourself. There's this fine line when you're learning new things between going over what you already know and challenging yourself to do something new. And the balance, you might think, well, once I learned how to do a few things, I'm only just going to ever wanna do those things over and over again. But what will happen is you'll start to get bored with what you can already do. And a good thing I like to tell my students is you should always be feeling a little bit uncomfortable when you're practicing. And I don't mean like nervous and agitated, but you should be doing things where you're not getting it right all the time. Because you want to be that's a sign that you are actually working on something that's making you better. It's the whole point of practicing in the first place. I work on things on my own so that when I go play with other people, I can have more things that I can express. Not so that I can just repeat the same things that I already know how to do over and over again.