Just about anyone can learn to pluck notes . . . not everyone can develop an expressive and nuanced playing voice.

Here’s a simple thing to try:

Play one note on your bass, but experiment with ways to make it expressive, all the things you can do to make that one note different. For example:

Fretboard finger pressure, duration of finger pressure, timing of finger pressure, damping notes with fretboard fingers, sliding up to or down to a note, bending a note up or down, picking with a pick or with fingers, the type of pick used, picking force, picking up or down, using the thumb, growing your fingernails or trimming them off, damping with picking fingers, damping with the palm of your picking hand, damping with the pick, double picking i.e. up and down, or picking in just one direction i.e. up or down, how close to the bridge you damp with your picking fingers or hand, where you pick in relation to the pickups and harmonics along the length of the string, etc.

If you experiment you will find many other things…

Build a vocabulary of skills and techniques, then choose the things that you like or that fit the song or style and you will have built a vocabulary for expressive playing, not just note plucking. Eventually, like learning to ride a bike, if your reach a level where you’re playing becomes second nature, then you may find that you can enjoy playing more than you thought possible.

Me, I’m still trying to remember the notes!

“Musicianship and artistry essentially have nothing to do with complexity. ”

Well, I misstated my idea here. I think what I am trying to say is that complexity exists in music in many dimensions or areas of playing a particular instrument. That the basic things people think of when learning, like pitch, duration, dynamic and meter are just the beginning. When the basics become more refined there are still many other ways to turn an instrument into an expressive voice. It’s like building a vocabulary of techniques and then putting them all together.

Hope that adds to your topic!

There are varying levels of complexity for all instruments. Violin for example, requires more athleticism than other instruments. Musicianship and artistry essentially have nothing to do with complexity.

There are many elements to playing a stringed instrument:

Dynamics, pitch, meter, rhythm, articulation, harmonics, phrasing, timbre, melodic motif, rhythmic motif, relative harmonic relationships changing as to the root, etc.

One thing missing from the skill set and artistry of many beginner bass players I’ve heard is the understanding that bass is actually -not- a simple thing, rather it involves many things besides just plucking one particular note after another in a certain order. Articulation is crucial for quality bass playing for example, and is the sign of a mature player.

Yada ya…

It’s true that 6 string guitars have a complex matrix of possible harmonic and sonority choices (the timbre changes for a particular note, depending on where you choose to play it), but complexity can exist in the nuances that define the difference between monkey motion and the work of an expressive artist.

Practice, practice, practice . . . it’s the ONLY way to get better!

Thanks x

Thanks for your comment. I’ll be posting more very soon. Maybe I’ll follow up this post with another 7 (or more) ways to improve your playing.

Thanks for visiting!

Paul