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Here are some bass lines from a few Big Sir songs. If you are unfamiliar with Big Sir, you may recognize the bass player as Juan Alderete from The Mars Volta. If that still doesn’t ring a bell, I urge you to check out both groups and buy all their music.

I’ve selected four great bass lines that display Juan’s great facility on the fretless bass (I hope I’m doing him justice!). His lines are lyrical and very groovy. You can dance to and sing these bass lines easily. They support the tune, the vocals, and are quite catchy. That is melodicism my friends.

If you are just starting on the fretless, these lines are simple enough for you grasp and to help you develop some of your own ideas, while being melodic. I’ve always felt that the fretless has to be somewhat melodic in order to showcase its distinct tone, otherwise, you might as well use a fretted.

Seeing as these are all fretless bass lines, the hardest part is going to be the intonation. You may want to practice these on fretted first to get the fingerings and proper tuning in your head. This way you won’t develop any bad habits if you attempt the fretless right away. That being said, if you feel confident or if you are already experienced on the fretless, then by all means, go for it.

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This exercise is designed to give you a basic understanding of superimposed rhythms known as polyrhythms.

The triplet is the most common polyrhythm- we hear it all the time. So, this exercise is using triplets to illustrate how polyrhythms work.

This particular exercise gives us a 3:2 polyrthythm or 2:3 depending on how you want to feel it. You can also apply this rhythmic application to melodies, solos, lines, and other scales or arpeggios.

If you really want to pursue polyrhythms, tunes like “Eulogy” by Tool or “Frame by Frame” by King Crimson feature some really cool polyrhythmic stuff. However, the undisputed masters of polyrhythms are probably Igor Stravinsky or Frank Zappa.

If the instructions in the video are not clear, leave a comment, to which I will reply.

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I’m just playing through this intro for you.

I start by playing it up to speed,
then slowly,
then just the chord shapes (in sequence, this the first step, i just wanted you to hear it first),
then at a medium tempo,
then up to speed.

Coordinate those left hand fingers into getting the chord shapes before adding the melodies in between the changes.

For the right hand, I’m switching between a traditional two finger picking technique and a more guitar player like finger picking, utilizing the thumb,  index and middle fingers. I’m not sure if Tal uses that fingerpicking, but it came instinctually to me.

\This is a great sounding bass part; gorgeous line.
Take your time with it, take it real slow.

Its fun to play when you’ve got it up to speed.  Hope you find this helpful. If you need any clarification, just leave a comment!

Simlarily, I looked at some of Tal’s fingerings for this intro from her performance on Australian TV, which is floating around YouTube for sure. After figuring out the other chords using a Tascam, I watched the video again and verified that these are the shapes she uses.