Bass Musician Magazine - 8th Anniversary Issue with Stu Hamm | Page 59

While he is best known for his bombastic pick-style playing, if you have ever checked any of his
solo records, you’ll notice how creative and diverse his music is. Bobby is someone who knows
flash, but he also knows to serve a song while having tremendous amounts of fun.

I have never played pick-bass before, so this was a whole new adventure for me as well. It was
important for myself as well to re-live the number one rule of learning something new... SUPERSLOW! I literary went ‘eyeballing’ Bobby’s video for hours and putting the line together note-bynote, detail-by-detail. I guess as usual, I did not reach the “bobbyvega-badass-level” in regards to
the fluency and the relaxed explosiveness of the line, but it should be enough to teach you some
fun.

In the video, I talk about four details to watch when you learn this excerpt:

1. How to hold the pick with your fingers
2. How to hold your right hand
3. How to achieve that pulse that pumps your ears
4. What the left hand does and how it works together with the right

As I’ll go into all of these in detail in the video, there is no written part for pieces of advice at this time;
we’ll see how that works out. Usually the motions I show you slowly in the video are exaggerated
(like lifting the fretting finger after the note is played). There are also a few little mistakes here and
there (for example while I show you the pattern of sixteenth notes and play down-up, I am telling
up-down instead), but I hope with the corrections of Bobby in the background, you’ll get the gist
of it (smile).