Bass Hanon

introduction

INTRODUCTION I first started playing the bass when I was a 15 year old kid. Back in the day there was no Midi, no Tab, no playalongs, no books of transcriptions, no bass magazines, no bass sites on the Internet. You were pretty much stuck with what you could work out on your own or what a teacher could show/tell you. (Note: trying to learn from records - you know, those 12 inch circles of black plastic - was a really interesting experience too - I developed great ‘needle lifting’ expertise! And ruined a load of vinyl in the process). The situation for bassists is totally different now; we’ve got the internet, we’ve got tab sites, books of transcriptions, YouTube lessons, DVDs, websites. All sorts. In fact I think we’ve almost got too much information. Now we all know that to get better we’ve got to practice. But if you’re anything like me, life is busy (a wife, two kids, three bands to manage, blah blah blah) and I have limited time to learn new songs, keep my technique in shape etc etc. So I like to find practice materials that do double duty - ie you can work on two - or more - things at the same time. What if I told you that I found a series of exercises -nearly 200 years old – that worked for me, and that if you do them for 20 minutes or so a day you will dramatically improve the following: Left hand finger strength and independence Right hand finger alternations and string skippings Left and right hand co-ordination Ear Training Fretboard familiarity in all 12 keys (from the lowest note on your bass to the highest – however many strings you have) • Oh, and these exercises are perfect warm up material for your hands too. • • • • •

I’m sure the question you’re asking is this: where have these secret exer | Bass Hanon| how-to-play-bass.com

cises been hiding? The answer is: they’ve been hiding all along, in plain sight. And they’ve been pretty much overlooked by the bass playing community because they are piano exercises. They’re called Hanons – after their creator, Charles Louis Hanon, a French composer born in 1819 – and they were specifically designed to help pianists develop a more virtuosic technique. The Hanons make great exercises when applied to the bass – you get to improve your finger dexterity, hand co-ordination, fretboard knowledge and musicality - all whilst doing 10 minutes of warming up every day. I’m so glad you bought the Bass Hanon Pack. If you apply it for 10 minutes or so every day, your investment will soon pay off – these exercises will give you increased facility and increased confidence too, both in your playing and your ‘hearing.’ And that greater confidence and facility will show up in your playing – and others will notice it as well, trust me. So thank you once again. Warm regards from the UK

Paul Wolfe www.how -to-play-bass.com PS I’d also strongly recommend that you sign up for my free weekly ezine – if you’re not already a member. Head over to my website, you’ll find the sign up link on the right hand side of every page. The ezine features a lesson/tutorial with a new bassline each week - with both notation and tab - plus loads of other bass related cool stuff.

| Bass Hanon| how-to-play-bass.com


bass hanons

THE BASS HANONS So what are bass hanons? The Bass Hanons are based on a series of piano exercises – which the classical piano fraternity refer to as Hanons, after the composer who designed them. I heard one of them being played whilst dropping off Christmas presents to a friend of my mother-in-law’s in December 2006. That was a happy coincidence, coming at a time when I was looking for more interesting warm up material. I asked what exercise was being played and my eyes popped out when my hosts presented me with a whole book of exercises (they popped out again when I found out that book was just Volume 1 – and that there were two more volumes). Within days I’d got a copy – it would have been sooner but there are not many music shops in the Cotswald’s part of England that stay open on Christmas Day! – and I started using these exercises on bass almost immediately. So what exactly is a bass hanon? Well – and I’ve adapted the piano exercises slightly – a Bass Hanon is a sequence of 8 notes that is applied sequentially to each note of a major scale. And the pattern is inverted when you descend. The original piano exercises were sequenced over two octaves (and usually went a fifth above) so unless you’re playing an extended range bass you’ll have to make do with one octave versions. If you wanna take one for a test drive, skip ahead to Hanon No 1 in C, plug your bass in and play through it to get a flavour of what these exercises are about. How can using the bass hanons help me as a bass player? Well as I said in the introduction to this book, if you play them slowly for 10 minutes or so they make a fantastic warm up exercise. As well as warming up both of your hands, regular use of the Bass Hanons will help with: • • • • •

Left and finger strength and independence Right hand finger alternations and string skippings Left and right hand co-ordination Ear training Fretboard Familiarity in all 12 keys


I can see how these exercises help with the fingers, how do they help with ear training? Well if you use the midi files that I’ve provided, you can play the Hanons whilst hearing the sound of a chord ‘drone.’ This will give you a harmonic reference point so you’ll actually start to relate notes to the sound of a chord. Using Midi is something that all practicing musicians should be able to do, it’s such a powerful tool. Whether you use PC or a Mac you should get hold of a cheap, midi sequencing program and learn how to use it so that you can splice the midi files together and play a Hanon exercise in all 12 keys with chordal accompaniment (See also the chord progressions section at the back of the book for recommendations on how to order the 12 keys when playing through a Hanon – so not only do you relate the sound of the Hanon against a chord drone, but you also start to practice hearing chords moving in different sequences! Powerful stuff for a simple warm up exercise). What about using the Hanons to work on my ‘chops?’ You can – and I’m sure a lot of bassists who buy this ebook will. But that’s not the reason I published this book. These exercises are the best warm up exercises I’ve ever encountered, and I like to try and make every bit of practice do double duty if possible – and these exercises work on sooooooo many things simultaneously it makes them a no-brainer in my eyes. Yeah, but I could really hone my chops, man. You need a sound technique to express your musical ideas, that’s a given. But you can get a sound technique with a surprisingly minimal amount of work. What I’ve found in teaching is that bassists who ‘work on their chops’ might become bassists who can play something fast, but it rarely makes them a better musician. If you want proof, go into a music store and hear the guys trying out basses and beating them up with their super-cool, super-fast slap and tap licks. Watch someone for a minute, the go up and say: ‘That’s a really cool lick man, I really like it. It would work really great for a song my band is playing. That tune is a fusiony kind of thing in a weird key though, C#m7b5 – any chance you could show me the lick in that key?’ Over 95% of the guys with ‘music store’ chops won’t even know what a C#m7b5 chord is let alone be able to change their lick to fit that chord. Moral of the story: don’t work on your chops, work on music.


Uhh…can I use any of the patterns as bass lines? Or solo lines? You could. But they’re just warm up exercises (that come with a collection of great side benefits too), my honest recommendation is spend 10-12 minutes a day with them, and then go play some other stuff.


how to use this book

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK Firstly I gotta stress something: the Bass Hanons are not music per se, they’re exercises. And they’re bloody good exercises. They help with good left hand technique, finger strength and dexterity, etc etc – we’ve gone into that already. And they’re so bloody good at doing at all those things that I’d love to say that I invented them. But there are bass players out there who will use these exercises to ‘build their chops.’ They’ll use the Hanons and beat up on their metronomes and drum machines so they’re playing Hanon 7 in 16th notes at 150 BPMs, or something like that. And they’ll play them for hours and hours. My advice is simple: Don’t. If you want to get ahead in the bass playing game don’t work on playing fast for speed’s sake. Work on hearing fast and being able to play what you hear. Being able to play something musical on a tune, that fits the style, and – most importantly - grooves will, in 99.9% of situations, be a better fit than being able to play something fast. A lot of kids think fast is better. It isn’t. Fast is simply…faster. (Now don’t get me wrong, I love to see the Billy Sheehans, Victor Wootens and Brian Brombergs of the world tearing up the fretboard as much as the next guy…but they’re not just playing fast, they’re also expressing musical ideas.) So use these Bass Hanons for say 20 minutes a day. For that they are as close to perfect as you can get, they warm your hands up, and there’s a truckload of secondary benefits thrown in too.

11 | Bass Hanon| how-to-play-bass.com

LEARNING A HANON So let’s start at the beginning. You’ve got your practice schedule mapped out for this week – – and you’ve made the wise choice of using the Bass Hanons as your warm up material. IMPORTANT NOTE: All the bassists who buy this ebook will be at different ability levels – if you don’t make it through all the steps it’s no big deal. Just do your 20 minutes or so, put the Hanons away and crack on with the rest of your practice schedule. Here’s the steps you need to go through to learn a Hanon. 1) Pick the Hanon you’re going to be working on. 2) Have a quick read through the intro sheet to each Hanon. 3) Decide whether you’re going to play the Hanon ‘positionally’ or ‘modally’ (for more advanced players) 4) Play slowly through the example I’ve tabbed out – remembering that there are alternative ways to play the Hanons than the ones I show. 5) Repeat the Hanon several times to get the sound of the Hanon in your head, and the feel of the fingerings in your hand. Play along with the midi file to make sure you’re playing it accurately (any wrong notes should really jar as they’re usually a semitone out!). 6) Choose a Key Sequence from the Chord Progressions section at the back of the book. 7) Begin playing through the Hanon in all 12 keys. 8) Stop. 9) Whenever 20 minutes or so is up (use a timer if you need to) put the Hanons away until tomorrow and get on with the rest of your practice. If you’re reasonably new to the bass guitar, it might take the best part of a week to get through a Hanon in all 12 keys – that’s no big deal. It’s not a race. What I suggest is that at the end of a week you move onto a new Hanon – even if you’ve not completed all of the above steps. Sooner than you think you’ll be completing a Hanon within a week, then it won’t be too long until you can do two Hanons in a week, etc etc. All the time you’re doing it, you’ll be improving your facility, your fingerboard knowledge and you’ll start playing with greater confidence.


Seriously. Trust me. It works. The important part of the process is to play the exercises slowly before you start playing with a metronome, or the midi files. If there are any sub sections that give you particular problems, just work on that bar – or couple of bars – until you’ve got it nailed. Do it slowly – but thoroughly – and you’ll find you will get through it. If you find you’re having trouble working through a Hanon the way I’ve tabbed it out, and then applying it to other keys, that’s no problem either. I’ve provided all 20 Hanons in every key with a blank tab staff, so if at the start you need to write in every fret location then go ahead and do it. No-one’s going to know but you. So get your bass out, turn a couple of pages, and give the Hanons a good workout! If you’ve got any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to drop me an email: [email protected]


Bass Hanon No 1















Bass Hanon No 2















Bass Hanon No 3















Bass Hanon No 4















Bass Hanon No 5
















Bass Hanon No 6
















Bass Hanon No 7
















Bass Hanon No 8
















Bass Hanon No 9
















Bass Hanon No 10
















Bass Hanon No 11
















Bass Hanon No 12
















Bass Hanon No 13
















Bass Hanon No 14
















Bass Hanon No 15
















Bass Hanon No 16
















Bass Hanon No 17
















Bass Hanon No 18
















Bass Hanon No 19
















Bass Hanon No 20
















Chord Progresions

CHORD PROGRESSIONS As I said earlier in the book, the ideal is to get to the situation where for a warming up session you pick one of the Hanon exercises and then play it up and down in all 12 keys! Now depending on how long you’ve been playing that might seem a long way off, but once you start getting into them and using them for your warm ups for every practice session, then it will be sooner than you think. It’s been documented before – on my website, in my ezine, I even touched on it earlier in the book – but I’ve got a finite amount of practice time. You’re probably in the same boat too. So I try to make every exercise do double duty. The easy way to make Bass Hanon do double duty is to use the Bass Hanon midi files (that is of course if you purchased the premium version). That way when you’re playing through the Hanons, you’re playing against a major chord – so your ear is getting a bit of training too. Now when you achieve the proficiency to play a Hanon exercise in all 12 keys in 10 minutes or so, it’s very easy to just start from C and go round the cycle of 5ths until you’re back to C. (Note: if you’re not familiar with the cycle of 5ths, don’t sweat it, we’ll get to that). BUT. As well as giving your ears a bit of training with the sound of major chords, with a bit of planning you can also give your ears some training in chord movements, as well as the sound of major chords. What are chord movements? You’ve all heard songs where the song changes key right? It’s a common trick in anthemic pop ballads to shift the chorus up a semi-tone as the song comes to a close. You’ve heard that right? Well if you can hear that, that’s a chord movement of a semi-tone. And there are other common movements as well. And mostly that’s theory for a rainy day (we’re good at theory in the UK – it rains so much!), but as you’re going to be playing through the Hanons regularly you can start training your ear to perceive these movements as well. So I’m going to do everything starting with C and we’re going to look at some different orders of going through all 12 keys for a warm up session. Now there’s

some music theory behind each one – but if you don’t know it we’re not gonna sweat it for now. The important thing is to take the sequence of notes that I’m laying out and just apply it to your playing through a Hanon in all 12 keys 1) The Cycle of Fifths | C | F | Bb | Eb | Ab | Db| Gb or F# | B | E | A | D | G | 2) Ascending, Chromatically | C | Db | D | Eb | E | F | Gb or F# | G | Ab | A | Bb | B | 3) Descending, Chromatically | C | B | Bb | A | Ab | G | Gb or F# | F | E | Eb | D | Db | 4) Ascending in Major Thirds (4 groups of 3, with a chromatic skip after every group ) |C | E | Ab | A | D | F | Gb or F# | Bb | D | Eb | G | B | 4) Descending in Major Thirds (4 groups of 3, with a chromatic skip after every group ) | C | Ab | E | Eb | B | G | Gb or F# | D | Bb | A | F | D | 5) Ascending in Minor Thirds (3 groups of 4, with a chromatic skip after every group ) | C | Eb | Gb or F# | A | Bb | Db | E | G | Ab | B | D | F | 5) Descending in Minor Thirds (3 groups of 4, with a chromatic skip after every group ) |C | A | Gb or F# | Eb | D | B | Ab | F | E | Db | Bb | G | If you start incorporating these sequences into your playing of a Hanon in all 12 keys, your ears will start ‘learning’ the sounds of these ‘modulations.’ Down the track, ‘knowing’ the sound of these modulations will put you at an advantage over most of your bass playing contemporaries who have to schedule separate ‘ear training’ sessions to learn this kind of stuff (because you and I both know that everyone is short of time, right? And most guys just won’t put that time in – so your improved hearing will not only make you a better bass player, it will make you a more employable bass player!)

Coming Soon

COMING SOON

Got something else on your wish list? If you liked Bass Hanon Volume 1, or you’ve been subscribing to the ezine at the how-to-play-bass.com website, there’s a good chance you’ll want more. As you can see there’s more goodies heading down the track - there’s a catch though. None of these products are ready yet. But they will be - and sooner than you might think! To make sure you get these products the moment they’re released, make sure you stay on the How-To-Play-Bass Ezine. If there’s anything you’d really like to see, drop an email to: [email protected].


about the author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Paul has played the bass since he was 15 (a LONG time ago!) and has made a living from music since 1992. In 1994 Paul co-founded CARTE BLANCHE, one of the UK’s most popular party/function bands, which he now manages. In addition to Carte Blanche, Paul has played with numberous tribute bands covering Abba, Robbie Williams, Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, Blues Brothers, Freddie Mercury, Kylie Minogue, Seventies Disco, Eighties New Romantic, Britpop, Bee Gees and more. Paul has played at the business end of nearly 2000 gigs since 1990 ranging from jazz duos in pizza bars to open air festivals for 10,000 people. Paul has played all over the UK and Europe - plus the odd couple of times in the middle east - and fits in the odd gig here and there with Carte Blanche. His last gig was for a party at the Ritz where guests played over £1000 a head! In March 2008 Paul set up the website www.how-to-play-bass.com - a website aimed at teaching the bass guitar to beginners, with a particular emphasis on song based learning. The website - and this unique approach - came about as a result of Paul’s dissatisfaction with how the bass guitar is taught.


Bass Hanon

Recommend Documents