I don’t know if this qualifies as an exercise, but it’s something I heard Lincoln Goines saying at BassImmersionDay2 in October. He was talking about how Gary Willis had shown him a way to practice single string finger picking exercises and scales. The idea is to focus on the picking fingers. Using your normal alternating fingerpicking style, pluck the first note. Then alternate to the next finger as usual, but mute the string before you pluck the next note. You can put in long paces btween notes, like staccato, or see how short you can make the spaces.
It’s basically an exercise on being aware of your picking fingers and creating separations and little spaces between each note. It’s something to keep in mind for that extra bit of note articulation and picking hand control.
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A bass player can easily start to feel “stuck” in one spot on the fretboard if they aren’t sure where exactly a pattern of notes are somewhere else on the fretboard. This is a good exercise for just going through and systematically memorizing where every note is on the fretboard. It’s a good little drill to run through when you feel it’s time to really conquer the fretboard.
Running through the tones in time with a metronome is the best bet for getting the most out of this exercise. This is just a memorization exercise, not a musical one. Don’t worry about tone, just be able to play each note in time.
Knowing where the notes are gives you the ability to jump/leap/walkup to specific notes in time, with good feel and confidence. People definitely notice that stuff and it separates you from the pack!
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