Re: how 2 git gud at bass?
Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 9:42 am
what worked for me was a semester in the Jazz Improvisation course ensemble at City College of San Francisco. i signed up as a guitarist, but took on bass because there was no bassist in the class. that was where i learned to play like a bassist rather than a guitarist slumming it. you just can't get away with playing guitar-dude lines on Freddie Hubbard songs. find yourself a situation that demands tasteful, non-guitar-dude bass lines--jazz, country and western, 50s rock, old-school R&B, Rolling Stones music--and the setting will dictate that you learn how to fit. your wrong stuff will become blindingly obvious when it's totally out of context.
as far as technique goes, i really have none. i learned to play finger-style and pick-style when still in my guitar-player-slumming mode using more or less the techniques i used for operating guitars (but you can't get away with thumb-and-three-fingers folk-blues playing), and frankly unless you're trying to become a tech god that's all you really need other that learning how different left-hand tactics affect the note, which you can scope for yourself. and as noted by other folks, work on where you put the note in relation to the drums and the overall rhythms/beat. note choice and placement make bass the most powerful position in a band, because you can totally change a song setting by what notes and note placement you use. playing relatively normal root/third/fifth is different that the punk/post-punk approach where you often play the fifth against the chords. listen to Paul Hanley in The Fall and Brix and the Extricated, who is an absolute master at this. and for fuck's sake lock in with the drummer, who is your co-worker in establishing the structure the rest of the band plays over. i have always liked resting one foot on the drum riser or the actual bass drum shell/rim to keep me tight with the kick drum, both on guitar and bass.
as far as technique goes, i really have none. i learned to play finger-style and pick-style when still in my guitar-player-slumming mode using more or less the techniques i used for operating guitars (but you can't get away with thumb-and-three-fingers folk-blues playing), and frankly unless you're trying to become a tech god that's all you really need other that learning how different left-hand tactics affect the note, which you can scope for yourself. and as noted by other folks, work on where you put the note in relation to the drums and the overall rhythms/beat. note choice and placement make bass the most powerful position in a band, because you can totally change a song setting by what notes and note placement you use. playing relatively normal root/third/fifth is different that the punk/post-punk approach where you often play the fifth against the chords. listen to Paul Hanley in The Fall and Brix and the Extricated, who is an absolute master at this. and for fuck's sake lock in with the drummer, who is your co-worker in establishing the structure the rest of the band plays over. i have always liked resting one foot on the drum riser or the actual bass drum shell/rim to keep me tight with the kick drum, both on guitar and bass.
To me it makes it harder to play in tune as it wobbles your pitch so really to play which chorus in tune on a fretless you have to be more on the ball.. 
but you are right in that it's probably just an 80s-ism. I like chorus on bass but mostly to make things sound greasier and fuzz sound worse. the 80s fretless chorus thing only sounded really good to me when mick karn did it but he did it by double tracking
