Playing sustains is one of the first bass guitar techniques you should be learning as they’re essential to smooth playing and good legato technique!
Playing Sustains
Sustains are rather simple to play. To play a sustain, you basically fret a note, pick it, and let it ring out.
- You have to keep even pressure on the string to make sure it rings out without buzzing or getting cut off.
- Practice playing sustains with all your fingers!
- If you’re playing fingerstyle, make sure that your picking fingers are able to play higher strings (higher in pitch, that is) without muting notes you’re trying to sustain on lower ones. In other words, you don’t want your picking fingers to lay up against the thicker strings on your bass when playing your highest strings.
- Once you get basic single-note sustains down, learn how to sustain entire shapes and how to sustain certain notes while playing others.
After you have sustains down, try practicing with some of these riffs:
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