BASS
INCREASING SPEED USING BURST TRAINING TECHNIQUES | Adam Nitti
One of the things I get asked about frequently is how to increase speed and dexterity . Whether you have been playing for 30 days or 30 years , chances are that you wouldn ’ t mind acquiring some more technical headroom in order to perform more fluidly and effortlessly on stage or in the studio . Although I could write many chapters on the subject of further developing technique , I thought I ’ d share one of the most effective and simple ways I have found to break through speed barriers on the instrument . I hope this simple approach will help you as much as it has helped me .
A lot of us have turned to the metronome , drum machine , or some other external clock source for help with increasing our speed and cleanliness on the fingerboard . By starting with very slow tempos , and playing exercises that challenge our dexterity , we can slowly work up to speed progressively and incrementally , until the point at which we hit our ‘ breaking point ’, or ‘ maximum tempo ’ for the exercise . This is where things start to fall apart technically , and we lose our ability to play the exercise or phrase with any consistency anymore . For example , using this popular approach , you might take a one octave major scale , and play through it at an eighth note pace starting at 60 bpm , and then raise the metronome setting at 10 bpm increments until you reach the point at which you can no longer play the scale with perfect accuracy .
This is a viable and widely used method , but in my experience I have found that even this approach has its limitations when trying to break through your current tempo-limited boundaries . This is because our mind and hands actually get conditioned to the repetitive process of a progressive tempo increase over time , and we actually find that the ‘ wall of our maximum tempo ’ feels impossible to break through , no matter how many times in a week we revisit it by working our way up the ‘ metronomic ’ ladder .
I ’ ve spent a lot of time and study trying to figure out how our brains work with respect to our bass-playing potential and limitations . What I have found is that often our methods of conditioning will establish predictable limitations . This is partly because we mentally carry the expectation that our limit is fast approaching as we work through the increasing speeds of the exercises we practice . In fact , we often develop a sense of anxiety while we are practicing in this way , in anticipation of reaching what we expect to be our breaking point as we watch the tempo settings on our metronome or drum machine ; subsequently , we end up mentally preparing for our breaking point as it draws near with every passing increase in tempo . Although it might sound rather silly or unorthodox , I have found tremendously greater success in trying to ‘ trick ’ my mind into performing at a more proficient level than I would have obtained by staying completely conscious of each incremental increase using the aforementioned approach .
Like many of you , I have spent a lot of time working with a metronome and doing as many combinations of exercises as I could that were devoted to speed and dexterity , slowly building tempo with each iteration along the way . However , one of the best ways I have found to increase your speed and cleanliness at a much faster rate , is to do what I call ‘ burst training ’ exercises … One example of this is to play an exercise or phrase at a particular tempo that is safe and comfortable three times in a row , and then without interruption , play the 4th repetition at double the tempo . After that , without interruption go back to the original tempo and start the cycle all over again . You keep cycling the exercise like this without interruption for several minutes , and if you can play it perfectly over and over then up the tempo and then start over again .
Exercise 1 on the next page illustrates this approach using a 1 octave G major scale , with the metronome set at quarter notes , at 50 bpm .
In Exercise 1 we play the G major scale ascending and descending using eighth notes for bars 1 through 6 , and then suddenly jump into sixteenth notes for bar 7 . This temporary doubling in speed is where the exercise takes you out of your comfort zone , but for a short enough period that you can still maintain your control over your timing accuracy . To continue with the exercise , I would recommend a strategy of playing through the currently selected tempo 5 times without any mistakes or sloppiness before upping the beats per minute to the next level . ( I would recommend tempo increases somewhere between 5 and 10 bpm for each successive iteration of the exercise .)
Here ’ s a similar example in which we utilize a triplet feel instead . In Exercise 2 we are just using a six-note scale fragment , also taken from the G major scale . Note that in this exercise , our metronome would be set to the dotted quarter note instead , at 50 bpm .
Once again , the pattern kicks into double speed after 3 repetitions , and then starts over again . Notice also that in this example , we are utilizing a 3 note per string approach , which changes the overall feel of our hand position . Of course , you could use any combinations of different fingering positions that would help you in achieving your goals when working on things like this .
The reason this approach is so effective is because it ‘ shocks ’ your system into playing twice as fast momentarily under focused concentration and attention to detail . Because you are only playing a single repetition at double speed , you do not become overwhelmed with the faster tempo , and thereby have a much higher success rate with respect to your conditioning . It is kind of like doing weight