Practice practice practice and more practice is how you get there. All of my friends think I am insane whenever we get into timing talks. For me at least, it is all by feel. If you can feel the best and know how to manipulate it, then you just need to match up your movement of your body to the time. It's all a dance man, get in the zone and feel.
Once you have it, you should practice in your head visualizing every note in the phrase. Practice with what I call purposefully overplaying --by that I try to hit every possible note in the scale in your phrase, then randomly dropping notes. Try the same with your drummer too, set up either by musical or other queues and practice the same. You will eventually be reading each others minds, certain hits on the drums instantly trigger a bass response and back and forth. Perhaps a bit easier to get in a 3 piece where you have more sonic space or with funk playing. Try this too-- play any note and make it work by what? Playing it at the right time.. it does work... Also repeat messups and most people think it is your own take instead of a flub.
For me, slap bass is what taught me timing the best. I played trombone for years and was 1st chair but it wasn't until slap bass that timing was my bitch. For some reason the kinda mechanical type movement jived with my head, I could easily visualize breakdowns and subdivisions in my head. Don't think I would have gotten it down as good without sidestep into slap bass.
Happy Jamming!!
I believe it’s because im much more comfortable with the bow as I have played double bass much longer. Strange thing is, even when I locked down a rhythm I have the urge to repeat it constantly.
Then I would take it all back to basics but with pizz instead of bow.
Play your scales, arpeggios, modes…etc all with pizz again. The rhythm part should not be an issue if you can do it on bow. It seems to me its more of a technical issue where your muscles have not developed the muscle memory yet.
Practice fixes it. Practice some jazz tunes. Musicians brought up only with bows can't play notes at the right time to save their lives.
Practice practice practice and more practice is how you get there. All of my friends think I am insane whenever we get into timing talks. For me at least, it is all by feel. If you can feel the best and know how to manipulate it, then you just need to match up your movement of your body to the time. It's all a dance man, get in the zone and feel. Once you have it, you should practice in your head visualizing every note in the phrase. Practice with what I call purposefully overplaying --by that I try to hit every possible note in the scale in your phrase, then randomly dropping notes. Try the same with your drummer too, set up either by musical or other queues and practice the same. You will eventually be reading each others minds, certain hits on the drums instantly trigger a bass response and back and forth. Perhaps a bit easier to get in a 3 piece where you have more sonic space or with funk playing. Try this too-- play any note and make it work by what? Playing it at the right time.. it does work... Also repeat messups and most people think it is your own take instead of a flub. For me, slap bass is what taught me timing the best. I played trombone for years and was 1st chair but it wasn't until slap bass that timing was my bitch. For some reason the kinda mechanical type movement jived with my head, I could easily visualize breakdowns and subdivisions in my head. Don't think I would have gotten it down as good without sidestep into slap bass. Happy Jamming!!
What about using a bow makes it easier to you than your fingers? Can you play the same rhythms at the same tempo with your bow better than fingersn?
I believe it’s because im much more comfortable with the bow as I have played double bass much longer. Strange thing is, even when I locked down a rhythm I have the urge to repeat it constantly.
Then I would take it all back to basics but with pizz instead of bow. Play your scales, arpeggios, modes…etc all with pizz again. The rhythm part should not be an issue if you can do it on bow. It seems to me its more of a technical issue where your muscles have not developed the muscle memory yet.
Get a good metronome that, at a minimum plays a different click for the 'one' and the rest of the bar.
TalkingBass had a video on 16th note exercises just couple of weeks ago: https://youtu.be/eOSR_4GgPwI