These three very simple techniques can add a little extra flavour to even the simplest bass playing. Trust me on this.
Hammer-On
Play the first note by strumming or picking with your right hand. Using another finger on your left hand, press down quickly on a second fret without strumming or picking the string again.
Slide
A slide is simply playing the first note and sliding down to the second with out taking your finger off the Fretboard.
Bend
Play a note then push the string either away or toward you. If you push enough, you can get a complete half step, which is like playing a note one fret higher.
Ian Fraser "Lemmy" Kilmister (born 24 December 1945), is best known as the founding and sole constant member of the heavy metal band Motörhead. He uses the bridge pickup exclusively (giving his bass sound more definition) and turns all the tone and volume knobs on the bass up full. On the amplifiers, he turns off the bass and treble and he turns the midrange up all the way. The result is a biting, almost guitar-like tone which is somewhat distorted and well-suited to his use of open-string drones and power chords. Lemmy positions his microphone uncommonly high. He said that, "In the days when we only had ten people and a dog, it was a way of avoiding seeing that we only had ten people and a dog."
Not one of the best known Motörhead songs. But a fantastic showcase of Lemmy's sound and playing style.
There are plenty more players out there well worth checking out in the Appendix - Geezer Butler, JJ Burnel, John Paul Jones, Foxton, McCartney - and that's before you get into your technical uber maestros like Flea, Geddy Lee and (whisper it) Jaco Pastorius.
The good news for students of the B-CNT method, is that ability isn't necessarily everything.
It's pretty well documented that the Pistols used to turn Sid's amp off. Didn't stop him becoming a punk icon. Pete Wentz, bass player for Fall Out Boy, is widely derided for his poor skillz throughout the interwebs. Even so, a guy with only this much ability can still boast having his own signature model bass in production.
But a final, special mention needs to go to Mr Adam Clayton.
Bono said of Clayton's early bass playing, "Adam used to pretend he could play bass. He came round and started using words like action and fret and he had us baffled... We thought this guy must be a musician, he knows what he's talking about and then one day we discovered he wasn't playing the right notes, that's what's wrong, y'know?"
In the band's early years, Clayton "generally played simple parts in 4/4 time." Many would argue he continued to do so in their latter years:
But then, as part of U2, he's won no less than 22 Grammy awards...
