Things I try to keep in mind when playing the bass

Hello. My name is Yoshitaka.
I'm an amateur musician, not a professional, but I’m going to write a little about what I try to keep in mind when playing the bass.

1. Note length

I believe that the bass makes the groove in a band. When listening to the performances of other amateur bands, you may feel that the rhythm of the drums and the bass are not in time.

I play jazz, and in Swing rhythm, the bass plays basically four quarter notes per bar.

However, I sometimes see some people play the quarter note like an eighth note + eighth rest, not extending the quarter note sufficiently.
With this, the walking bass does not sound beautiful and you won’t be able to get the swing feeling.

After all, I want to be fully aware of the length of the notes, listen to the sounds of the drums and rhythm guitar, and create a groove.

2. Mute and missing sound

Though I'm not always able to mute well, I've heard that the quality of mute is one factor that distinguishes a professional from amateur.

It's unpleasant to hear the sound of other strings when you don’t properly mute, making the sound unclear.

Basically, I try to lay my index finger down and mute it like a barre chord on a guitar, though I’m not confident I’m doing it perfectly. I also try to mute with my right hand, but if there are many notes, it sometimes gets muddy.

I hope that somehow I will get better at playing bass if I continue to keep muting in mind, but when I switched to a 5-string bass, I couldn't mute at all, which made me sad, and so I used this.
↓FretWrap
Staff Blog "What is a FretWrap?"

I'm not using it now because I can't use the 1st fret with this. My mute skill has improved a little, so I’m trying without the FretWrap.
It depends on the playing style, but it seems that players who slap a lot at high-speed on a multi-string bass tend to love FretWraps.

3. Practice songs

Here are two songs with well-known bass intros. Little Brown Jug and Stand By Me.

I think it is not that difficult to just play these, but it is very difficult to create the groove.

In particular, Stand By Me always makes me think about the note lengths and rests to make my version faithful to the original.
With a 5-string bass, the E sound can be played on the 5th string on the 5th fret, so it is easier to mute the sound than using an open 4th string.

I think a double bass was used for the original, but I'd like to manage to create the groove that can't be expressed only with a score.

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