BASS
STARTING OFF THE NEW YEAR WITH NEW BASS PLAYING GOALS | Adam Nitti
Photo by Katarina Bubenikova on Unsplash
The beginning of a new year is a perfect time to take stock of where we are, where we’ ve been, and where we hope to go next. For bass players, this is also a great time to take inventory of our musical strengths and weaknesses and reflect on our bass playing goals. For many of us, this boils down to a single overly-simplified objective: I need to practice more. Or you might be even more specific, as in: I really need to work on my technique. While those goals aren’ t terrible, they’ re also vague enough to fade away by February if you don’ t have a meaningful plan of how to accomplish them. Meaningful progress on the instrument comes from setting goals that are specific, realistic, and more intertwined with the type of bass player you ultimately want to be.
One of the most important things to understand about goalsetting as a bassist is that not all goals need to be technical. Many players default to pursuing speed-oriented benchmarks, scale memorization, or dexterity-centered targets, but musical growth is broader than that. Your goals should reflect the role you want to play as a bassist and not just how fast or clean you can execute a passage.
START WITH MUSICAL CONTEXT, NOT JUST EXERCISES Before reaching for the metronome or sheet music, take a moment to think about the musical contexts that you aspire to be a part of as a bass player. Do you want to primarily be a gigging bassist? A studio player? A weekend jam session regular? Maybe you are an electric bassist who wants to pick up the upright, or maybe the other way around. Your goals should be based around these aspirations. You also do not want to ignore raising your game in your current musical scenarios; the more skilled you are in context, the more musicians will want to have you on stage or in the studio with them.
For example, if you’ re playing live regularly, a productive goal might be improving your consistency and feel. That could mean locking in with a drummer more reliably, improving your live tone, or developing an unshakable pulse and rhythm for the band to rely on. If you’ re recording at home or in studios, goals like improving note smoothness, consistency in dynamics, or tonal consistency across the entire fingerboard may yield some of the most valuable results as compared to things like pure speed or dexterity exercises. This mindset shifts your practice goals from abstract improvement to functional musicianship.
SET FEWER GOALS AND MAKE THEM MEASURABLE One of the biggest traps musicians fall into is setting too many goals at once. Instead of resolving to“ get better at everything,” choose two or three focus areas for the short term that will receive most of your attention. Fewer concurrent goals allow for deeper attention and drastically improve the probability that you will follow through and succeed.
Each goal should be measurable in some way. Rather than“ improve time feel,” try something more concrete that intentionally takes you out of your comfort zone. One of the traps a lot of players fall into is that they will default to practicing things that they already have experience with or things they have been revisiting for years already. It is vitally important to push your hands and mind to work on things unfamiliar that will be difficult at first but pay greater dividends because of how they stretch you.
If this seems too daunting at first, start by incorporating some added variety and challenge to what you might already be doing. For example, if you are used to practicing with a metronome on beats two and four, try playing with the metronome only on beat 2. You will be relying on your internal clock more because you will only have a single beat to reference instead of 2. Also do this using beat 1, 3, or 4 in the same way to force yourself to realign with the measure using different single beats for reference.
Another simple example might be to record yourself playing a single groove at different tempos and listening critically for drift. In other words, listen back closely to see if you
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