How to Learn Difficult Music on Bass 

That bass sounds sounds so freakin good. I used to see Rodney Holmes play all the time in the early 2000s with a guitar player named Steve Kimock. He is consistently mind blowing

Fundamentals are so important. You're the man bro !!

About 30 minutes into it I thought I was doing pretty good, until I went back to the beginning to hear the phrase up to tempo. Probably gonna take quite a few more hours to nail this one. Thanks again for the great instructional!

Another great instructional from Janek! Just about one year ago I started using this method. It has allowed me to learn many things that I thought were beyond my abilities. Just a few weeks ago I finally learned the lick in the middle of "Gaslighting Abbie". It took many hours of repetition to be able to play it cleanly and up to tempo. Next on the list is "Smoke on the Water".

Thanks janek !

Thanks for the valuable tips, brother! I have to admit I don’t know how I played that song in real time (on a big fat Precision neck) when we did the Brecker record, and every time we’re about to do a gig, I shed the the shit out of that song and it kicks my ass. Then, it often doesn’t make it to the setlist, as what happened with you (but if it ever does happen, we’ll be ready to slay it, right?) 😂

Thanks for sharing!

Thanks a lot,Janek 🎶💪🏽🎵!

Brilliant teaching. Thank you.

This was a well timed video for me. Thanks.

I know it's not the point of the lesson, but I love your right hand, Janek: straight wrist, no tension, play at 100 mph the whole gig!

Never cared much for double p configurations but damn that thing sounds good in your hands....

thanks! This is super-helpful, and reassuring that my approach to transcribing is on the right track. Your exercises are part of my daily routine

Dear Janek; once again you are answering very clearly a question that I have been asking myself: should I include the repetition of fundamentals into my daily practice routine? Now I know. Thanks once again for sharing your knowledge and for radiating inspiration...

Super cool behind the scenes footage of that outdoor concert! Would like to see more!

Thank you for this video! It really makes me think I am on the right path. I can read music in treble and bass cleft. And am very comfortable with scales and shapes in all the modes. The song I am working on is Like a Prayer. So fun!!! I want to learn the piano next to write melodies 😊

Spot on

repeatable - i love that. thanks

Nice tone on that bass 👍

When people ask me what my striving for knowledge gets me, I respond that it lets me ask better questions when I do run into an expert I want information from. It's really about building the vocabulary over time that allows you to have good interplayer communication; productive learning, doing the right things while wasting as little energy as possible on inefficiency or aspects unnecessary to the conversation; conversations at higher levels foster flow because everything prior has been internalized and is now as removed as possible from conscious thought, deleting the latency of those synapses. Well now I figured out how reverb works at a neurological level, or not. What is the decay of a thought's transit?

amazing video and great keys! also thanks for discovering that track for me. Not to be pedantic, but just a wee correction: 2nd group of semiquavers isn't a descending major diatonic scale, but a pentatonic one. So not A-G#-F#-E but rather A-F#-E-D (checked the original tune but you can still hear it in your video's intro) Again, thank you and i hope i dont come accross as a d1ck :P

I've been working on Richard Bona licks for years

Hey Janek, not a question directly related to this video. But I was wondering what chair you use to practice? I've tried a few different things and haven't managed to find something ideal. Thanks a lot!

I don't read music, are your book in tab also?

we're definitely calling that a "pp" bass, right?

Thank you for being a wonderful bass-brother and for all that you share! 👏