eighth and sixteenth notes??????

hi, im am new to this site and to playing bass. but the lessons you offer have help me alot, but now i hit an rutt with trying
to play eighth and sixteenth notes. i play with my fingers and it seems nearly impossible to play unless your using an pick.
so if anyone has any tips or techniques that can help it would be greatfully helpfull. thxs

Hey man, welcome to the site!

By playing with your fingers, you mean your walking with them right? Not just a 1 finger pluck? Using two fingers is very efficient to manage 8th notes.

As you've said, you really like Dman's lessons. So take a look at Seventh Nation Army by The White Stripes. The build up is just simple 8th notes.

G l----------------------------------------------------
D l---------------------------------------------------
A l----------------------------------------------------
E l-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5--------------

So two bars of 4/4 time, eight 3's and eight 5's.



Play along to it and I'm sure you can easily hit eighth notes, even with one finger plucking.

Now sixteenth notes are a bit more tricky. I can't think of any examples at the moment.

What I do, is count aloud, 4 quarter notes (4/4 time). And each time I say one of the quarter notes, I play 4 beats. So it looks like this.

1----2----3----4---------------------Counting beats
1111222233334444----------------Playing on bass

Or, alternatively to counting yourself, take out a metronome or drum loop in 4/4 (plenty of online ones) set to Allegro 120, and play 4 notes for each tick. If your comfortable at 120, then set it up another 10 to 130. That way you'll gradually build up your speed. This definitely can be achieved with just two plucking fingers, just got to practice.

Hope you get that xD If not, I'll try and explain it better

Just incase that didnt help you, here are a few facts:

-In 4/4 time, every bar has 4 beats, called quarter or 4th notes
-if you double the speed you will fit 8 even notes into the bar, these are 8th notes
-double again for 16th notes and again for 32nd notes (32nd's are a bit quick and arent used often but thats what they are)

So sum up of the facts:

A bar is a set time (varys from song to song but the length of a bar shouldnt change during a song) , containing 4 even beats (if its 4/4, if its somthin like 3/4, there are 3 beats but u can learen about that later). If you play these 4 beats twice as fast, you are fitting 8 even beats into the set time of the bar, therefore 8ths. Double that speed to fit 16 evenly spaced beats into a bar. The speed of 16th and 8th notes all depends on the length of the bar they are in.

I hope i coverd some stuff that Garth didnt