#127 - Fingerstyle Speed Bursts Exercise (Patreon)

My fellow bassists,

Often when we try to increase our speed on bass we start by learning an exercise slowly and then gradually increase the tempo until we reach our limit. Doing this can definitely work well but sometimes we can hit a wall where it seems like no matter how many times we practise that exercise, we just can't get above a certain tempo 🙃

This is where speed bursts can be very useful. This week's exercise will allow you to practise playing very fast in short bursts, which is both physically and mentally easier than just playing constant fast notes. Playing these short bursts gets you accustomed to the feeling of playing fast, and helps to convince your brain that this is possible. That allows you to break through your previous wall!

With this type of exercise, don't worry too much about playing everything perfectly! The goal here is just to get used to the feeling, so that you can move on to longer fast exercises later.

This exercise just runs through every inversion of the Bb minor pentatonic, followed by F minor pentatonic, if that helps 😅

As always, let me know if you have any questions about this and I'll make sure to respond ASAP!

Thanks for coming here and learning with me, have a great weekend and I'll see you in the next lesson!

Charles