Something I’m often asked is how can I make things feel easier on the bass neck, how can I make things flow better, and my answer is exactly what has paid off for me this calendar year (2025) - consistent practice and two specific exercises, one to work on harmony, one to keep me gig ready
I made a very conscious commitment at the start of the year - daily practice on the instrument, even if it was only 20 minutes. Have I managed every single day? No, but I’ve come quite close, and the result is a noticeable jump in my own fluidity across the bass neck. Another factor is making a commitment to maintain some basic harmony exercises within my routine, the result being that moving through chord changes has become noticeably smoother!
Consistency in our practice mirrors consistency in our daily lives. You work on any given thing on a daily basis with focus and intention, you will get better at it, especially if the work itself is focused and targeted on the things that will address weak points.
As I’ve already mentioned, there are several specific little exercises that I’ve steadily been working through throughout the year…
Let’s talk about the harmonic exercise first. I cannot remember exactly when/where I was first introduced to this exercise, but I note it in my practice diary as the ‘endless ii-V’, because it works round the cycle of 5ths in alternating minor 7 and dominant 7 chords. As such we start on Cm7 then move to F7, Bbm7 – Eb7, Abm7 – Db7 and so forth, until we end up back at Cm7 and then the cycle repeats (the pattern therefore being ii-V, ii-V, ii-V…). Initially you can work the exercise around the bass neck using a basic arpeggio shape for each chord that you know and can use immediately, but as you become more familiar you can start to experiment with how you can lay each arpeggio out on the bass neck and also how you shift around the bass neck (something that has really started to properly open up).
Initially I worked this using the basic 1-3-5-7 arpeggio (root position), but you can keep things interesting by systematically working through all the different permutations (1-3-5-7, 3-1-5-7, 5-1-3-7, 7-1-3-5 and so forth). The more permutations you work through and the longer you work on each, the more complete your understanding of each arpeggio, how it falls on the fingerboard and how you can navigate around the bass neck will become! You can then begin to mix the permutations up (e.g 1-3-5-7 on the minor 7, then 3-1-5-7 on the Dominant)…there really is no end point to this sort of work!! Literally 10 minutes of work per day on this exercise over an 8 month period will produce a real increase in harmonic fluidity!
I’m planning on filming a full tutorial on this exercise in the next couple of weeks which will make it live a little better for you all!
The exercise I’m using to stay ‘gig fit’ on what has been a quieter year for me when it comes to playing live is to program complete sets of between 60 and 90 minutes and play through them non-stop, standing up to get as close as I can to the experience being on a gig while still being in my home studio (this is essential if, like me, you practice seated all the time). I’ve been trying to do this at least twice a week since May when I played a gig and just didn’t feel as sharp as I should have done (despite working through the set lists) and it really helped me feel better going into the other gigs I did over the summer, the songs felt sharper and more natural and I needed to use my iPad a lot less than usual.
Here are a couple of example setlists I used, I personally use AnyTune to run through my sets but, much as I dislike Spotify, this is how I can make them available in the public domain.
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Set 1 is a list of Indie/Rock songs I play regularly with different bands. It’s in a very rough order to represent where things might fall in a set but it hasn’t been meticulously crafted as such!
Set 2 is a list of Soul/Pop/Motown tunes I’ve gotten called to play over the summer. Something I’ve also done with this set specifically is work on it using both my P bass and my Fodera, because I’ve needed to play these tunes using both these basses recently and as such I’ve needed get much more comfortable with playing them on the P, as it’s a very, very different bass to play.
I’ve also been programming in the actual sets bands have sent me and have done exactly the same thing. I’ve also been doing this very late at night because one of the by-products of becoming a father and my little one starting school is that I now wake up and go to bed significantly earlier than I used to, and if it’s going to be a late gig it can be useful to know if that is going to have an adverse affect that you can prepare for. These things all combined have really added to my overall feeling of consistent performance and feeling of ease when playing tunes and navigating the bass neck!
Hopefully some of you find this useful, feel free to drop your thoughts into the comments below!
This is a heartening read. I often bounce between a 6 string bass and a P, so try to keep them in rotation.
I'd onky add that, aside from occaisionally standing up to practise, I also try to do sitting down practise in different rooms, or parts of the room. Also, practising with the light off (sometimes). It all helps.
For my last jazz gig on guitar (and as the MD), i did something quite similar to your set prep.
A couple of weeks before, i put together a full 60 minute set of backing tracks to play to, and i would hit that full set at least a couple of times a day working on my single note parts (melodies and solos), running the tunes one right after the other, stepping through the tracks in the order they were going to be played live. This not only keeps you sharp but can also give you a good sense of how the set will flow (i'm looking at the overall vibe, the changes, the tempos, and the keys to make sure that we're not going to play things that are too similar in the same set).
i also would make sure that at least one of those full set playthroughs would happen at the same time the gig was scheduled for; it makes sense to me to align one's biorhythmic clock to be ready to play at showtime, whenever that might be.
i don't worry about practicing standing up because i'm always sitting down on a jazz gig or for recording, and i do practice in low light conditions much of the time just beacuse that's how i like it, LOL.
Another thing i've been doing since March 2025 just to keep my overall chops and stamina up is 20 to 40 minute real time playthroughs of lofi sets that i find on youtube. It's not just for stamina either; it's also a great way to do ear and improv training: the track starts and you need to find the key and then try to play something that works.