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18. Phrasing Techniques

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Phrasing techniques are simple additions to your toolkit that will enable you to play smoother, more effective basslines. They’ll also allow you to add a more expressive edge to your playing, in turn enabling you to find your own unique voice on the bass. The phrasing techniques that will be covered in this course include hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, trills, and vibrato. These are all very simple techniques that you’ve probably begun to use already. All of these techniques are performed by the fretting hand.

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This course is 42 MINUTES long and contains the following videos, each of which can be selected from the video player above:

1. What Are Phrasing Techniques?

This lesson will introduce you to each of the phrasing techniques covered in this course: hammer-ons and pull-offs, slides, trills, and vibrato.

2. Exercise #102

This exercise is a slow tempo rock groove that uses hammer-ons extensively. The fill in bar 4 features two long phrases consisting of descending hammer-ons.

3. Exercise #103

This exercise is another rock bassline that makes use of hammer-ons. As you’ll discover, hammer-ons are perfect for fills such as the one in bar 4 of this line.

4. Exercise #104

This exercise is a rock riff that uses pull-offs to addition to the ‘galloping’ rhythm that was covered in the sixteenth notes course.

5. Exercise #105

In this exercise, two consecutive pull-offs are used in each bar. Like hammer-ons, pull-offs can easily be played in quick succession on adjacent strings.

6. Exercise #106

This is a fairly simple exercise that uses features root-octave figures that are preceded by slides. The dotted quarter note rhythm makes is also used here.

7. Exercise #107

This exercise uses slides to give a smoother feel to a typical rock line. This line is based on the minor pentatonic scale, which is covered in the Scales & Arpeggios courses.

8. Exercise #108

This groove is based around C and the trill that is used in bars 1 and 3 highlights the major third of the chord. Watch out for the rests and staccato notes.

9. Exercise #109

This funk-flavoured line features several hammer-on figures, some of which are followed with trills. Octaves are also used in the final bar.

10. Exercise #110

This exercise is a simple rock riff that uses vibrato extensively. You’ll find that the use of vibrato can really add colour to a simple bass part.

11. Exercise #111

This exercise features sustained notes that are played with vibrato. The minor pentatonic scale once again forms the basis of this line.