Hi everyone,

I just posted a new lesson video called "Three Little Boxes". It's an accuracy training video that focuses on the right hand, while also working on your independence skills.

Hope you enjoy it!

Some great ideas to incorporate into my practice, Thanks Greg.

Great lesson, Greg! In addition to helping with accuracy it breaks the fingers out playing comfortable patterns. Thanks.

Thanks, David and Jeremy,

Yes, I feel like we are too willing to practice scales (which are REALLY important, don't get me wrong), but melodies are made up of many different intervals, so these kinds of exercises prepare us for many different melodic situations.

Three-fingered melody has lots of freedom of movement within it, so I like to take advantage of that as well...

An exercise I like is playing along with ImproviseForReal 'Sing The Numbers' tracks (There are audio samples of these about half way down each of these pages - here & here.).

The tracks have a section in which the presenter sings a series of scale tones over a backing, then an equal length section for you to respond. The result is a series of patterns, not really 'random' since they are always chosen to be 'musical', to replicate, at a moderate pace.

Of course, if using an instrument, the first thing you need to do is work out the key so you know what '1' etc. represent - but that's good practice too.

Even if I'm listening & using these tracks away from my instrument (as part of 'ear' training) I'm often thinking about the fingering I'd need to use to play the pattern, having chosen right or left hand side as the hand to think about.

The 'Sing the Numbers 1' tracks that use notes 7,1,2,3,4,5 present an interesting challenge on the bass side about which 7 to use, and with which finger. The 7 adjacent to 1 on the same string is usually attractive but the notes that come before it can present interesting choices for how to arrange the whole sequence! I like to use Greg's "3 finger Unified Bass" approach where I can, but 'creativite adjuatment' seems to be required at times?

PS. Bandcamp Friday tomorrow (7th October 2022). https://isitbandcampfriday.com/

You could play this with 3 notes on each string, or 1-2-1-3 on the low string and then 1-2 on the next string. If the key was in a higher position on the board, then you could play 1-2 or 1-2 on the lower string, then jump back and play 1-2-1-3 on the next string.

The Great Unified Three-Finger Bass Strategy is very flexible in that way. Hope that helps.

Yes it does. For some reason I'd got fixated on having the 1 2 3 on the same string when on that bass side in that situation (trying to tack the 7 on to the 'classic' 1-2-1-3 finger pattern for 1,2,34?) & was missing an obvious alternative! I'm usually quite a lateral thinker, but in this case I had blinkers on.

Thank you Greg for breaking me out of that 'box'.

That's my job. PRISON BREAK!!! Free those hands...