Bass side - visual reference when learning?

[murathan]

I dont recommend to use mirror because it makes an addiction hard to get rid of. You must eventually learn to jump by feel. There is always a risk of landing wrong. However you will learn in a song to make long jumps somewhere in your progress. Another idea is to do long jumps by passing fingers over the bass buttons touching them (without pushing them). Thisway you be sure where you are. You can also skip the last "pah" in an "oompah" move to gain jump time nobody will notice. We used that in a couple of student pieces with long jumps. It works (For example F-E jump)

 

[JerryPH]

I am all about doing it all by feel. I’m working on a couple pieces that have bass jumps all over the place (the easy one is C-F-Am-D the changes to B to E-F with the same pattern, and another one that has patterns that jump from F# to Ab and changes keys several times in the piece… you CANNOT do that looking in a mirror, by the time you look to find the bass, you have just stopped the music for several very awkward seconds… lol

I think doing it by any other method than touch and/or muscle memory is a waste of time.

Start small, build on bigger jumps. Very similar to what you do on the right hand!