Good Bass Practice

The way to get good at anything is to practice, and playing bass guitar is no exception.  There aren’t any genes in DNA that makes a person a better bass player, they might have a few traits that might be helpful, but when it comes down to it, the amount of work a bassist puts into practice is going to ultimately determine how proficient their playing will become.

What is Practice?

It is important to actually understand what practice actually is.  There are plenty of people around that claim to practice 5-10 hours a day, yet their actual playing isn’t that particularly amazing.  This is because many people confuse anytime spent playing for actual practice.

Practice involves working on improving techniques that a bassist is not completely proficient at, just playing songs you already know doesn’t accomplish that.  Just because a bassist can’t play a song perfectly doesn’t mean that the song is actually above their skill level, bassists in bands have to practice their own songs to play them perfectly and very few of them write bass lines actually past their current skill level.

Why Practice Is Important

Learning how to play the bass guitar involves a lot of muscle memory and ear training, both of which are improved by practicing and drilling techniques to improve them.  Bass movements pretty much are unique, so there really aren’t other activities that particularly actively work the same muscles in the same ways.  Since playing the bass is also fairly physically demanding, it can take some time just to get the muscles in the hands strong enough to even use certain techniques, let alone refine and perfect them.

Weightlifters don’t go out and expect to lift 500 lbs on their first try, they spend time and effort working up to the weight by gradually increasing the weight they lift.  Bass playing is a lot like that, you need to put the time to build up to the more advanced techniques by refining the basic movements.  Not to mention, unlike weightlifting, bass playing skills are not cumulative, there are quite a number of bassists and guitarists who can play fairly well at high tempos with high end techniques, but given very simple bass lines will fall apart.

A bassist should be able to play whatever the songs they play call for, not fall apart if easy whole note bass lines pop up.

How Long to Practice

One question quite common with beginner bassists is how long they should practice.  There is no cut and dry answer, since people are different and some might have certain things already down and can move on.  A guitarist learning to play the bass will likely have more finger strength than someone with no experience on any instrument, and might be able to spend less time working their muscles.  Basically it is just the amount of time you take to learn a song or techniques from bass guitar lessons for you.

However, bear in mind that more practice isn’t automatically better.  Realistically, a beginner bassist is probably only going to productively be able to practice for half an hour, and even a very good, advanced bassist will start to become unproductive after two hours because the point of practice is to push yourself just beyond your current skill level.  When you drop back and play things within your skill level, the amount of time you can play is much higher.

Remember, if your hand starts to feel tired or hurts, just stop.  You are much more likely to do harm than good.  However, properly practicing will help make you into the best possible bass player you can be.