Work Your Fingers Hard

• 1). Adapt your finger technique to the instrument you play. Use the pizzicato slap style for the traditional upright or double bass, the bedrock of mainstream acoustic jazz. For best results, pluck the string hard, snapping it back against the fingerboard between the main notes of a bassline.
  
  
• 2). To create further variety and rhythmic punctuation, smack the strings with all four fingers of your right hand, preferably staying in time with the snare drum. This gives the music more punch without losing subtlety. Add greater tonal variety by using the sides of one, two or three fingers.
  
  
• 3). For the electric bass, slapping takes on a different dimension. Strike the lower E and A strings with the bone of your thumb, then pluck the strings with your right index and middle fingers, bouncing them off the fretboard. This technique creates a bouncing, buzzing effect. To produce a faster series of notes, rotate your forearm.
  
  
• 4). When playing electric bass, spice aggressive popping and slapping passages with hammer-ons and pull-offs. For hammer-ons, bring the finger of your fretting hand down hard on the fingerboard behind the relevant fret. This is the opposite of a pull-off, where you let the string ring out by pulling the fretting hand off the bass.
  
  

Expand Your Harmonic Horizons

• 1
  A jazzman in classic fingerstyle position, playing a walking bass line.
  
  Expand your melodic horizons with walking basslines, the playing of rising or falling quarter notes to imply movement. Build your walking basslines around the first, third, fifth and seventh chords, walking upward from the root, or first chord, and back down to the seventh. Spice up those lines with chromatic tones appropriate to the scale.
  
  
• 2). Learn how to improvise. Most jazz tunes are structured around a key melodic line, or head, which becomes a launchpad for improvisation. The most common method is harmonic, using common chordal tones as the jump-off point for solos. Motivic improvisation is the other common method, focusing around the redefinition of specific phrases, or motives, as the key to a creative musical statement.
  
  
• 3). Always keep the focus on the melody. The best improvisations are the most basic statements, built around syncopation and the slurring of notes. As Duke Ellington once famously observed, "You've got to find some way of saying it without saying it." Strive for a cohesive statement that builds from a well-defined beginning, middle and end.
  
  
• 4
  The late Jaco Pastorius was among the major fretless bass exponents.
  
  Train your ear to distinguish between different chords and pitches. Study many different players and styles to boost your technique and learn the standards that are heard on bandstands to this day, such as "Take the A Train" and "Seven Come Eleven." An acute ear also helps in approaching the fretless bass, which requires far greater discernment to tell between minute shifts in pitch.