Jazz Bass Lesson: Playing with Expression
Let your bass sing like Pavarotti, Stevie Wonder or Aretha Franklin. Expressiveness in your playing is what adds texture to a performance and separates good double bass playing from great playing.
What do you want to say when you play the bass? What story are you telling?
Techniques like sliding, variable vibrato, and hammer-ons make your playing more emotional for the listener. They make an important connection and bring the song to life. Just like a great vocal does.
Here are a few techniques from the video above that will make your bass playing more expressive.
Smear: A relative of the slide, the smear is a small slide up or down at the attack of the note. You often hear this in blues playing. It adds interest and emotion, taking a simple note at the beginning of a phrase from stout to stunning.
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Hammer-ons/pull-offs: This simple technique of taking your right hand out of the equation and striking the fretboard with your left hand to sound the note makes a phrase flow. The pull-off, where you sound the note with your left hand by forcefully pulling your finger off the string, works with the plucked note and the hammer-on to add fluidity.
All these techniques can help bring your bass playing to another level, but don’t forget the metronome. Timing is the key ingredient to making these techniques work. They help you work with and against the beat, but if you don’t fit perfectly within the rhythm, your playing will sound sloppy and uninspiring.
There are more free jazz bass lessons over at the ArtistWorks Online jazz Bass School with John Patitucci, so head over and check them out.