How To Easily Play Bass Guitar Faster

All bassists want to build their speed so here is a lesson in how to easily play bass guitar faster. Scott Devine is one of the best electric bass guitar teachers online. In this lesson, he's teaching one of his favorite exercises for speeding up your playing. I've found this lesson is very effective at not only helping me play faster, but improving my technique. It will help make crossing over strings with your right hand easier also.

By the way, if you like his sound, he's using D'Addario EXL160 Nickel Wound Bass Strings. I love these strings because of their tone, durability and the fact they're easy on the fingers.

Supplies Needed

D'Addario EXL 160 Nickel Wound Bass Strings

D'Addario EXL 170 Nickel Wound Bass Strings

D'Addario EXL170BT Nickel Wound Bass Guitar Strings, Balanced Tension Light, 45-107

Step by Step Instructions

You'll notice when watching the video that Scott wears a glove or gloves while playing. This has nothing to do with playing better or differently. He has a condition called, "Musicians Dystonia". It's a brain and muscle disease that affects many musicians and other people such as typists, athletes, etc. In Scott's case, the hands have tremors which result in not being able to play guitar or bass. However, he found that wearing gloves somehow fools the brain and he's able to play without any tremors whatsoever.

In this lesson, you'll be working on a C major scale. C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C and you'll carry it on to the G string hitting the D-E-F also. He makes clear which fingers you should be using to hit each note.

In this exercise, you start by playing two notes fast. The C and the D. You do that until you feel you can add a third note, the E. Then after you are playing the first 3 notes at a good, consistent speed, add the 4th note, the F. What this will do is demonstrate whether you have a technique problem or not. It may be that you're using the wrong fingers to hit the notes or the right hand is moving around too much. You continue this exercise adding notes until you have gone through the entire scale. Scott says if you can play the first two notes fast, then the only reason you can't play all of the scale fast is due to your technique. By watching what you're doing, you can figure out the areas that your technique is slowing you down.

When you get to the 6th note, you'll be crossing over 2 strings with your right hand and this is where things can fall apart. Just back down to the 5th again or slow down if there is a problem.

Spend as much time as necessary on the first two notes being fast and consistent. When you go to 3 notes, you might spend a 1/2 hour on just those 3 notes to get the speed and consistency right before advancing to the 4th note. Be patient.

When you feel that you can play the entire scale perfectly, then it's time to work on descending. It's the same process. Play 2 notes and then advance to 3 until you can play the whole scale backwards fast and consistently.

Scott says the biggest problem he sees with this exercise is people going through it too fast and not taking their time to get the whole scale right.

He emphasizes that if you can play a 3 note sequence fast, there is nothing stopping you from playing the whole scale at that same speed. The only thing standing in your way is not putting in enough time to play the scale fast and correctly. If you can discipline yourself to do this lesson for 30 minutes a day, I can tell you from experience, you will see a pickup in your speed.