When I was in third grade, there was this one kid who had hardly any friends. He was a grade younger, so I didn’t know him well, but at recess he was generally puttering around by himself.

He seemed sad. And one morning in a frenzy of good-will I struck up a conversation even though he was in a grade lower than me and my pals.

He seemed happy to talk, and soon was telling me about this and that and what he did and stuff he had. I guess he was impressing me because I was older. He said he had a telescope.

“Really?” I asked. He nodded vigorously.

“Yes!” he said, “At night you can see the moon real clear, and during the day it makes things look like they’re right there.”

I had never seen a telescope. I was hooked.

“Could I come see it?” And his face brightened up.

And then his expression grew wistful.

“Well …” he said, “you can … but …”

But what?

THE GOOSE

“We have a goose,” he said.

Now I was really interested. I had never seen a goose.

To shorten the story, what happened was that he seemed oddly reluctant, but agreed I could come by after school to see the telescope.

And so after school, I did. I didn’t walk with him, because he was from a lower grade. But I did dawdle along behind, and so two minutes after he went in his front gate, so did I.

And then I learned about a goose.

A BATTLE LOST

I wasn’t very big when I was in the third grade. The goose seemed almost as tall as me. But, with wings spread wide and flapping, and hissing and darting its beak left and right, as it waddled angrily toward me, it seemed much larger.

I turned and ran.

When I got home, I realized one of the reasons that kid didn’t have many friends.

NO WONDER!

Nobody could visit him. It was just too much. It was a major, terrifying event. It was beyond a hassle. It was too scary. If you were going to go to his house, you’d need to bolster all your courage. You’d have to get ready for the experience.

Now as a grown man, and as a bass player, this childhood hassle may not seem like much.

But I’m struck by how it’s not completely different from the hassle of going to an audition.

WHAT IT MEANS TO AUDITION

You know the score. You’re a bass player, and generally speaking, that means if you want to perform, it will be with a band.

And that means, to find a band, you’ve got to go to auditions.

And … it’s a hassle, right?

You have to gather all your focus. You have to haul the gear. You have to meet some guys who are, half the time, looking at you funny when you come in the door.

Sure, sometimes it can be fun.

HOW OFTEN DOES IT WORK OUT?

But, all too often, it’s a hassle. If not on the front end, then a hassle on the back end. Because a *lot* of those auditions have got to end with … no gig.

And half the time when you do get the gig, you have doubts about the other guys in the band. And all too often your fears were well-founded. One guy can never show up on time. The guitar player just won’t turn down. One of the guys is a jerk, and the leader, well … he’s a Nazi.

Not always. But you’ve seen it right?

You’d agree that the whole process is, generally, a hassle? And that, all too often, it just doesn’t work out?

And yet, if you want to play in public, you need a slot in a band. A good band. A stable band. A band that gets gigs. Hmmm.

END THE HASSLE FOREVER

What if there were a way to end all that hassle … forever?

What if you could just do a simple thing, and turn your back on the hassle, the egos, the jerks, the idiots, the guys who turned you down, and the bands you *wish* had turned you down … what if you could just do a simple thing, and turn your back on all that hassle, from now on?

Well, you’re in luck.

TWO METHODS FOR ENDING THE HASSLE

Because there’s a way. Wait! No, there are TWO ways you can accomplish this. It could transform your life and your music, I think you’ll agree.

Here’s how. (I’m warning you now, it’s awfully simple. But it’s radical. You’ll have to suddenly think completely different. Can you do that?)

Here’s how …

METHOD #1

Using the skills you’ve developed, you can change over to playing basslines on what we’ll call a ‘specialty tapping instrument.’

I mean an instrument that’s specifically designed so you can play the six bass strings just by touching them to the fret.

And on this special instrument, there’s another set of six strings, tuned higher. And here’s something wonderful …

If you place your left hand on bass strings around fret two … and you place your right hand on the ‘melody’ strings around fret twelve … then the notes beneath each of your hands is exactly identical across all six strings.

And you know what this means, right?

It means that *you already know how to play those high melody strings*!

YOU ALREADY KNOW HOW TO PLAY IT

You play those high melody strings exactly the same as you play those low bass strings.

Now the two hands are playing two octaves apart, but the notes are exactly the same. If you can play “Louie, Louie” with your left hand, you can play “Louie, Louie” in unison with your right hand.

It’s startlingly easy to do.

And in fact, right at first when you’re learning how to transfer over to this radical new way of playing, when you’re learning to transfer, you can even train your two hands at the same time.

Now once you can simply play your two hands identically, and at the same time, then you simply do a little … less.

For example say you were arpeggiating a chord with both hands. Now try just playing the low root left-hand, and play the other notes right hand.

Suddenly you can do rhythmic things in an astounding way … and it’s simply using what you already know.

AUDITION? WHAT AUDITION?

Now, about those auditions …

Since you can play with both your right hand and your left hand, you will find it’s just a baby step from there to … playing roots or hooks with your left hand, while you play melody or rhythm with your right hand. I mean it. It’s actually *easy* to do.

It just so happens … that your background as a bass player … has pretty much perfectly prepared you with the skills to play two-handed touchstyle on such a specialty instrument.

And now you can start to play … solo gigs.

Start with a coffee house or restaurant gig, work up to weddings and bigger gigs. Because you’re offering something so different, getting the gigs is not that hard.

Now look. Even though your practice will carry you further along than it used to, you *do* still have to practice. And even though you have a great novelty factor to help you get gigs, you do still have to go ask for the gigs.

But audition for a band? What band?

METHOD #2

Once you can play your specialty touch-style instrument — it won’t take long — here’s what you do …

Place an ad, or put up some posters, or spread the word around, that *you* are interviewing musicians for a band. Now you’re not just the bass player. It’s *your* band.

Now going to an audition isn’t your hassle.

It’s somebody else’s hassle!

HOW TO GET YOUR SPECIALTY TOUCH-STYLE INSTRUMENT

Click here for a display of affordable and great sounding two-handed tapping instruments.

And click here to see all the prices.

You can do this.

What are you waiting for?

Act today, and change your world.

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You can play fast or slow, but learning bass technique initially is learning to play one note at a time. If you experiment with playing chords, you’ve learned that you must spread the notes out, because close-voiced notes sound muddy.

BASS PLAYERS BEGIN TAPPING ON BASS

With modern amplification, more and more bass-players are learning bass tapping – that is, just touching the strings to the frets, in order to sound a note. This touchstyle method allows playing the bass strings with both hands, because plucking is not needed.

And tapping on bass opens the door to chordal bass music, and to playing melodies. With two-handed tapping on bass you can be a better side-man, but you could also begin playing solo gigs, and it’s not all that difficult, with the Easy Touchstyle Method. At the end, I’ll tell you how to get a free bass-tapping method book that reveals how easy it can be.

Obviously, to play spread-out chords, and to play high-pitched melodies, you’re going to need more than a four-string bass, because you’re going to need more range.

So here’s the question –

How many strings make for easy learning to play bass tapping? And how many strings work best for melody playing?

LEARNING BASS TAPPING EASIER WITH MORE STRINGS?

Because you’ve worked darn hard to master the four or five strings you already have, your reaction might be that having more strings would be harder to play.

But it doesn’t work like that. Having more strings permits less interference between your two hands. I’m reminded of the country boy wandering the city street, and seeing a piano in a store window. “Gosh!” he said, “How would you ever mash all them notes at once?”

And that’s the answer. Just because there’s a lot of strings on the instrument doesn’t mean you play them all at once. You still select just a few strings. But having more room for your two hands to operate makes it easier for your two hands to learn tapping bass.

USING TWO STRINGSETS FOR TAPPING ON BASS

For example, if your two hands are to operate independently, like a piano player — easier than it sounds with the right method — then suppose you have a six-string bass. You could use three strings for the ‘bass’ part, and the other three strings for a melody. But you can’t play most melodies very easily on three strings without a lot of moving up and down those three strings.

More strings would be easier, and would give each hand more room. So maybe you get a bass that has eight strings. This is better. You could have four strings for the ‘bass’ part, and that would leave four strings for the melody. This is workable, though you will discover that your two hands will occasionally squabble, because both of them want some note that’s on the same string!

But what if you split the strings into two separate groups of four and four?

And suppose on the ‘bass’ set you added a couple of higher strings. Now you’ve got six ‘bass’ strings. You can still play all the basslines, plus you can play spread-out chords easily all on the low end of the bass strings.

And to the four melody strings, suppose you add two lower strings. Now you can cover the range of pretty much any melody you’ll find on a leadsheet.

And because there’s so much overlap in the two stringsets now, your two hands will never have to fight over a string, because each hand has got six strings to play in.

MAKING IT EASY TO LEARN TO PLAY BASS TAPPING

It is much EASIER to learn full two-handed tapping on bass, when you have two stringsets and each of your hands has all the strings it needs.

It is much EASIER to learn bass tapping when you have two stringsets, and the optimal number for fast learning is six bass and six melody. I’ll explain why …

You’ll like this … it’s a little bit of magic …

OPERATE YOUR TWO HANDS THE SAME WAY? THAT’S EASY!

If you examine one of the Mobius Megatar touch-style basses which our company makes, you’ll find double dots at fret two, and at fret twelve.

With this fact, you can use a powerful learning method. It works like this …

Begin by placing your left hand just above double dots at fret two on the bass strings.

And place your right hand just above double dots at fret twelve on melody strings.

In these two positions, the notes below your two hands across all six strings are *identical*.

So for your initial learning of pure bass tapping play, you only have to learn *one* set of scales, and *one* set of chord shapes, and you can even train both hands at the same time. This clarity, simplicity, and power produce very rapid learning, and also allow you to very rapidly transfer 85%-95% of what you already know as a bass player.

TAPPING ON BASS WITH YOUR RIGHT HAND JUST GOT EASIER

Furthermore, all those years you were training your left hand on the frets … you were actually training your head. And you’re in luck, because your right hand is wired into the very same head! You will soon discover that what your left hand knows … your right hand almost knows already, because you’ve already built the patterns into your head.

What this means is that, in this position, your left-hand skills will transfer very fast to

your right hand, because what each hand does to produce a G-Triad is identical, and on the same strings beneath each hand. Feels the same. Looks the same. Sounds the same.

This is clear in your mind, and fast-learning in your hands.

FASTER LEARNING TO PLAY BASS TAPPING

The point is that it is FASTER-LEARNING when you have two stringsets, and your initial position makes the notes beneath your two hands to be identical across each six strings.

Make no mistake. In the Fret-Two bass-strings position, and the Fret-Twelve melody-strings position, the notes are two octaves apart. Two octaves apart, but the same notes beneath each hand.

This gives you a nice split of bass and melody, and it’s much like playing two-handed piano. But it’s faster-learning than piano, because when you move your two hands the same way, you get the same sequence of notes.

In your initial learning, you can even train your two hands identically and at the same time. Later, separating out two different parts can als be easy … with the right method.

FREE HOW TO PLAY BASS TAPPING METHOD BOOK

And you can get a free copy of the bass tapping method book where this system is completely revealed. The Easy Touchstyle Bassics method book on two-handed tapping on bass comes free with a (free) subscription to the world’s premier Bass Tapping Newsletter, and you can get your free bass tapping lessons here.

Remember: Two string-sets provides faster learning, it’s immediately clearer in the mind, and your two hands will never need to fight over who gets to use a string.

The left hand can play all the range of a 6-string bass, plus easy good-sounding four string chords between frets 1 and 9.

The right hand can play all the range of melodies written on the treble clef. The two hands can easily play unison melodies, which is easy as eating a sandwich with two hands, but it sounds really, really good.

I promise you — playing with two stringsets of six is easier than playing on 6-strings, easier than playing on 8-strings, the mental map is clearer, and learning is fast.

As you learn more about the Easy Touch-Style Method for tapping on bass, more and more you will appreciate how rich the music, and how simple it can be.

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