If you think about it long enough, music theory itself is a pattern. Going to internalize this because I'm learning that when I understand it as a pattern and practice the notes make sense. The theory makes sense. Kind of like patterns are the praxis(physical practice) of the theory in music theory.
Was playing slap bass crazy foolishness for Larry Graham, Marcus Miller, Victor Wooten, Ida Nielsen [Prince for the las 6 years] Charles Berthoud, Mohini Dey, Louis Johnson, Flea, Freddie Washington, Mark King??? etc. etc. Do what ever suits you but don't try and dissuade other people from what they personally prefer!
All of this is good and fine but where's the groove. A pattern is just a pattern is just a pattern, it's bland, it's lifeless without the groove. I'd rather learn to play the bass guitar to music than just sit there playing monotonous repetitive noises. This is why I quit the bass because all the teachers I had kept going back to the same repetitive means of teaching. No beats, no groove, no rhythm. The bass is boring enough if you haven't developed the tools to play what you hear. But without groove and music to go with that maddening pattern, what's the point. Makes me want to shoot myself, ugh!! Yeah the bass is made of patterns just like many instruments but if you aren't learning how to make that thing swing and groove, you're going to drive yourself up a tall tree and never be able to get out of it.
Overtime your muscle memory and ear will start developing these melodic lines within music your playing, but a cool thing I do is learn or work on a boring melodic left hand “pattern” (scale exercises for example) until I can play it in slow to fast tempos, then.. I do the fun part and most important part: I play or “jam” them to a song I learned or a chord progression with an ensemble playing behind it and I make these concepts musical with different rhythms within the confines of that song. And then I explore the entire fret board within that song as well coming up with any idea I can think of and find which notes and patterns work on the fretboard as a whole. The coolest thing now in this day and age, there’s all these programs you can load a song into and it takes out the bass line or any other instrument(s) you want to play along with it. Using these songs as a practice tool like that for at least 20 minutes a day has gotten me exponentially better week after week, and better in the last year doing this than I have in the last 10 years prior of practice. Doing this ignited my drive to play bass more than ever because now I’m having more fun and most importantly seeing very quick, exponential results of applying melody (the patterns), rhythm, and both right hand and left hand technique all at the same time. Ive gotten better than I’ve ever been 100x faster using this practice method of patterns and technique while most importantly having more fun than I’ve ever had playing bass alone “practicing”
And I guess the most important part is when I play the song live I now have an arsenal of different ideas I can use at any given time (when appropriate).. I’m truly implementing these patterns live because I basically already did it by myself while practicing them every which way all over the fretboard
This video is not focused on rhythm. If you want to practice rhythm play with a metronome. If your rhythm is bad but your notation is good then this video isn't for you. He's not telling you to not practice rhythm. He's telling you a cool way of thinking about notation
I’m sorry for your past experiences. But this is a 5 min video out of the hundreds here on RU-vid. And that’s not including my private teaching and courses. We teach and talk about groove all the time. So not sure where what your angle is or specific problem with me is but I totally agree with you that groove is important (which we’ve discussed plenty of times before in the past.) thanks for your input though. I always appreciate the comments and criticisms but when they are directed towards me as if I don’t teach that specific topic is where I have to intervene. It’s tough enough trying to provide this info for free to RU-vid. But would expect you to understand that. Anyway, thanks for watching ✌🏾
