A good place to start getting your chops, or musical technique, together is in smaller ensembles. By playing with a fellow musician, even with a single guitarist or pianist, you can often find a level of intimacy and confidence that will help you make advancements. Besides that, it is often easier to coordinate schedules, which is a real concern in the music world. Nevertheless, one of the best aspects of performing in a small group setting is the lack of a dedicated timekeeper. Without a drummer, you are forced to confront the issue of time keeping in a more central way. In other words, you need to be more active in creating the groove and maintaining its tempo and feel.

As mentioned earlier, the first rule of bass playing in most genres of music is to establish the root of the chord. This is played on beat one of each measure or at the moment each new chord is struck. On the other beats, you generally fill in with complementary riffs (arpeggios, rhythmical patterns, and so on) or scalar passages. If you look back to Chapter 5, you'll see that the root note is always on beat one in each figure. It's singularly important to play these exercises (and the other exercises in this book) in time. This includes getting to the next measure in time.

Luckily, in most rock bands there is a guitarist. Having a guitarist in the band is great because you will, basically, speak the same musical language and you can help each other to stay in time. Your two instruments are not all that different. Because the tuning and layout of both instruments is similar, you can also show each other musical parts through visualization. In music, this type of communication is priceless.

The piano is often considered the most comprehensive instrument. This is because its pitch range is so vast and because polyphony (the ability to simultaneously play notes) is unlimited. The piano is a veritable symphony of sound. Also, the layout of the piano is like a visual map of the musical universe. By studying the piano, all musicians, including bassists, can get a better sense of the possibilities and implications of harmony, melody, and rhythm.

Similarly, playing with a good pianist can also be an education in itself. Pianists can often instruct you in the proper usage of chords, and they can easily supplement your bass part with chords and melody. There is not much a piano, in the right hands, can't do. This means that you can feel what it's like to play with a much larger ensemble even if it's just you and a pianist.