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Bass-Hanon 2
Bass-Hanon 2
INTRODUCTION
I first started playing the bass when I was a 15 year old kid. Back in the
day there was no Midi, no Tab, no playalongs, no books of transcrip-
tions, no bass magazines, no bass sites on the Internet.
You were pretty much stuck with what you could work out on your own
or what a teacher could show/tell you. (Note: trying to learn from re-
cords - you know, those 12 inch circles of black plastic - was a really in-
teresting experience too - I developed great ‘needle lifting’ expertise! And
ruined a load of vinyl in the process).
The situation for bassists is totally different now; we’ve got the internet,
we’ve got tab sites, books of transcriptions, YouTube lessons, DVDs, web-
sites. All sorts.
Now we all know that to get better we’ve got to practice. But if you’re
anything like me, life is busy (a wife, two kids, three bands to manage,
blah blah blah) and I have limited time to learn new songs, keep my
technique in shape etc etc.
So I like to find practice materials that do double duty - ie you can work
on two - or more - things at the same time.
What if I told you that I found a series of exercises -nearly 200 years old
– that worked for me, and that if you do them for 20 minutes or so a day
you will dramatically improve the following:
I’m sure the question you’re asking is this: where have these secret exer-
3 | Bass Hanon| how-to-play-bass.com
cises been hiding?
The answer is: they’ve been hiding all along, in plain sight. And they’ve
been pretty much overlooked by the bass playing community because
they are piano exercises.
The Hanons make great exercises when applied to the bass – you get to
improve your finger dexterity, hand co-ordination, fretboard knowledge
and musicality - all whilst doing 10 minutes of warming up every day.
I’m so glad you bought the Bass Hanon Pack. If you apply it for 10 min-
utes or so every day, your investment will soon pay off – these exercises
will give you increased facility and increased confidence too, both in
your playing and your ‘hearing.’
And that greater confidence and facility will show up in your playing
– and others will notice it as well, trust me.
Paul Wolfe
www.how -to-play-bass.com
PS I’d also strongly recommend that you sign up for my free weekly ezine
– if you’re not already a member. Head over to my website, you’ll find
the sign up link on the right hand side of every page. The ezine features
a lesson/tutorial with a new bassline each week - with both notation and
tab - plus loads of other bass related cool stuff.
The Bass Hanons are based on a series of piano exercises – which the classical pi-
ano fraternity refer to as Hanons, after the composer who designed them. I heard
one of them being played whilst dropping off Christmas presents to a friend of my
mother-in-law’s in December 2006.
That was a happy coincidence, coming at a time when I was looking for more in-
teresting warm up material. I asked what exercise was being played and my eyes
popped out when my hosts presented me with a whole book of exercises (they
popped out again when I found out that book was just Volume 1 – and that there
were two more volumes).
Within days I’d got a copy – it would have been sooner but there are not many mu-
sic shops in the Cotswald’s part of England that stay open on Christmas Day! – and
I started using these exercises on bass almost immediately.
Well – and I’ve adapted the piano exercises slightly – a Bass Hanon is a sequence of
8 notes that is applied sequentially to each note of a major scale. And the pattern
is inverted when you descend.
The original piano exercises were sequenced over two octaves (and usually went a
fifth above) so unless you’re playing an extended range bass you’ll have to make do
with one octave versions.
If you wanna take one for a test drive, skip ahead to Hanon No 1 in C, plug your
bass in and play through it to get a flavour of what these exercises are about.
Well as I said in the introduction to this book, if you play them slowly for 10 min-
utes or so they make a fantastic warm up exercise.
As well as warming up both of your hands, regular use of the Bass Hanons will help
with:
Well if you use the midi files that I’ve provided, you can play the Hanons whilst
hearing the sound of a chord ‘drone.’ This will give you a harmonic reference point
so you’ll actually start to relate notes to the sound of a chord.
Using Midi is something that all practicing musicians should be able to do, it’s such
a powerful tool. Whether you use PC or a Mac you should get hold of a cheap, midi
sequencing program and learn how to use it so that you can splice the midi files to-
gether and play a Hanon exercise in all 12 keys with chordal accompaniment (See
also the chord progressions section at the back of the book for recommendations
on how to order the 12 keys when playing through a Hanon – so not only do you
relate the sound of the Hanon against a chord drone, but you also start to practice
hearing chords moving in different sequences! Powerful stuff for a simple warm up
exercise).
You can – and I’m sure a lot of bassists who buy this ebook will. But that’s not the
reason I published this book. These exercises are the best warm up exercises I’ve
ever encountered, and I like to try and make every bit of practice do double duty
if possible – and these exercises work on sooooooo many things simultaneously it
makes them a no-brainer in my eyes.
You need a sound technique to express your musical ideas, that’s a given. But you
can get a sound technique with a surprisingly minimal amount of work. What I’ve
found in teaching is that bassists who ‘work on their chops’ might become bassists
who can play something fast, but it rarely makes them a better musician.
If you want proof, go into a music store and hear the guys trying out basses and
beating them up with their super-cool, super-fast slap and tap licks. Watch some-
one for a minute, the go up and say: ‘That’s a really cool lick man, I really like it. It
would work really great for a song my band is playing. That tune is a fusiony kind
of thing in a weird key though, C#m7b5 – any chance you could show me the lick
in that key?’
Over 95% of the guys with ‘music store’ chops won’t even know what a C#m7b5
chord is let alone be able to change their lick to fit that chord.
You could.
But they’re just warm up exercises (that come with a collection of great side bene-
fits too), my honest recommendation is spend 10-12 minutes a day with them, and
then go play some other stuff.
Firstly I gotta stress something: the Bass Hanons are not music per se, they’re
exercises. And they’re bloody good exercises. They help with good left hand
technique, finger strength and dexterity, etc etc – we’ve gone into that already. And
they’re so bloody good at doing at all those things that I’d love to say that I invented
them.
But there are bass players out there who will use these exercises to ‘build their
chops.’ They’ll use the Hanons and beat up on their metronomes and drum
machines so they’re playing Hanon 7 in 16th notes at 150 BPMs, or something like
that. And they’ll play them for hours and hours.
My advice is simple:
Don’t.
If you want to get ahead in the bass playing game don’t work on playing fast
for speed’s sake. Work on hearing fast and being able to play what you hear.
Being able to play something musical on a tune, that fits the style, and – most
importantly - grooves will, in 99.9% of situations, be a better fit than being able to
play something fast.
So use these Bass Hanons for say 20 minutes a day. For that they are as close
to perfect as you can get, they warm your hands up, and there’s a truckload of
secondary benefits thrown in too.
You’ve got your practice schedule mapped out for this week – – and you’ve made
the wise choice of using the Bass Hanons as your warm up material.
IMPORTANT NOTE: All the bassists who buy this ebook will be at different ability
levels – if you don’t make it through all the steps it’s no big deal. Just do your 20
minutes or so, put the Hanons away and crack on with the rest of your practice
schedule.
If you’re reasonably new to the bass guitar, it might take the best part of a week
to get through a Hanon in all 12 keys – that’s no big deal. It’s not a race. What I
suggest is that at the end of a week you move onto a new Hanon – even if you’ve
not completed all of the above steps.
Sooner than you think you’ll be completing a Hanon within a week, then it won’t
be too long until you can do two Hanons in a week, etc etc. All the time you’re
doing it, you’ll be improving your facility, your fingerboard knowledge and you’ll
start playing with greater confidence.
The important part of the process is to play the exercises slowly before you start
playing with a metronome, or the midi files. If there are any sub sections that give
you particular problems, just work on that bar – or couple of bars – until you’ve got
it nailed. Do it slowly – but thoroughly – and you’ll find you will get through it.
If you find you’re having trouble working through a Hanon the way I’ve tabbed it
out, and then applying it to other keys, that’s no problem either. I’ve provided all
20 Hanons in every key with a blank tab staff, so if at the start you need to write in
every fret location then go ahead and do it.
So get your bass out, turn a couple of pages, and give the Hanons a good workout!
As I said earlier in the book, the ideal is to get to the situation where for a warming
up session you pick one of the Hanon exercises and then play it up and down in all
12 keys!
Now depending on how long you’ve been playing that might seem a long way off,
but once you start getting into them and using them for your warm ups for every
practice session, then it will be sooner than you think.
The easy way to make Bass Hanon do double duty is to use the Bass Hanon midi
files (that is of course if you purchased the premium version). That way when
you’re playing through the Hanons, you’re playing against a major chord – so your
ear is getting a bit of training too.
Now when you achieve the proficiency to play a Hanon exercise in all 12 keys in 10
minutes or so, it’s very easy to just start from C and go round the cycle of 5ths until
you’re back to C. (Note: if you’re not familiar with the cycle of 5ths, don’t sweat it,
we’ll get to that).
BUT.
As well as giving your ears a bit of training with the sound of major chords, with a
bit of planning you can also give your ears some training in chord movements, as
well as the sound of major chords.
You’ve all heard songs where the song changes key right? It’s a common trick in
anthemic pop ballads to shift the chorus up a semi-tone as the song comes to a
close. You’ve heard that right?
And there are other common movements as well. And mostly that’s theory for a
rainy day (we’re good at theory in the UK – it rains so much!), but as you’re going to
be playing through the Hanons regularly you can start training your ear to perceive
these movements as well.
So I’m going to do everything starting with C and we’re going to look at some
different orders of going through all 12 keys for a warm up session. Now there’s
some music theory behind each one – but if you don’t know it we’re not gonna
sweat it for now. The important thing is to take the sequence of notes that I’m
laying out and just apply it to your playing through a Hanon in all 12 keys
| C | F | Bb | Eb | Ab | Db| Gb or F# | B | E | A | D | G |
2) Ascending, Chromatically
| C | Db | D | Eb | E | F | Gb or F# | G | Ab | A | Bb | B |
3) Descending, Chromatically
| C | B | Bb | A | Ab | G | Gb or F# | F | E | Eb | D | Db |
|C | E | Ab | A | D | F | Gb or F# | Bb | D | Eb | G | B |
| C | Ab | E | Eb | B | G | Gb or F# | D | Bb | A | F | D |
| C | Eb | Gb or F# | A | Bb | Db | E | G | Ab | B | D | F |
|C | A | Gb or F# | Eb | D | B | Ab | F | E | Db | Bb | G |
If you start incorporating these sequences into your playing of a Hanon in all 12
keys, your ears will start ‘learning’ the sounds of these ‘modulations.’ Down the
track, ‘knowing’ the sound of these modulations will put you at an advantage
over most of your bass playing contemporaries who have to schedule separate
‘ear training’ sessions to learn this kind of stuff (because you and I both know that
everyone is short of time, right? And most guys just won’t put that time in – so your
improved hearing will not only make you a better bass player, it will make you a
more employable bass player!)
Coming Soon
COMING SOON
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Paul has played the bass since he was 15 (a LONG time ago!) and has
made a living from music since 1992.
Paul has played at the business end of nearly 2000 gigs since 1990
ranging from jazz duos in pizza bars to open air festivals for 10,000
people. Paul has played all over the UK and Europe - plus the odd
couple of times in the middle east - and fits in the odd gig here and there
with Carte Blanche. His last gig was for a party at the Ritz where guests
played over £1000 a head!