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Practice Session Tips
In recent months I’ve been practicing a lot. My father and I have spent a lot of time talking about Arnold Schultz and his techniques and concepts and some of it has resonated very strongly with me.
As I work on it, and as I record every practice session and listen to it, I continue to make interesting discoveries about my playing. I think some of these things would be helpful for many other musicians so I thought I’d share a few.
My left hands leads. For many years I’d focused my attention on my right hand as the culprit for time and articulation issues. I discussed it with Dave Weckl once and he suggested maybe it was my left hand. After all this time it seems he was correct. I’ve spent a lot of time practicing very softly, sometimes only articulating every 2 or 3 notes in the course of a fast passage (say 8th notes at ¼ note=300bpm) and realized that my left hand was kind off in…well…left field. After clearing the confusion the right hand was causing out of the equation I was able to hone in on the left hand and realized that it hadn’t been carrying it’s own weight at all. Now that I’ve brought the left hand into it’s proper role in the big picture, my right hand is left to play loud or soft, staccato or legato, warm or harsh…whatever. It also really evens out the notes when you’re playing lines that are part right-hand articulated, and part hammered. For me…for now…this starts happening once I exceed 1/8th notes at 1/4=300~320bpm.
Account for every note. This is something else Weckl brought up with me and one of Anthony Jackson’s mantras. I understood, of course, but was never able to wrap myself around the applied reality of it. Now I see, though. In the context of the Schultz paradigm, the consciousness is the conductor of what you do, and the motor nervous system is the executor. In other words, you may consciously will a result, but the task of actually doing it needs to be delegated to the motor nervous system in order be done with accuracy and predictability. In fact, this seems to me to be an absolute truth. It’s hard to accept that we don’t directly consciously control our muscles…but we don’t. Anyway, another thing the conscious mind does WHEN IMPROVISING in particular, is to establish WHAT to play and sort of reconcile it with the music. I’ve been amazed at times when I’ve played lately that even in the context of an extremely fast or complicated line, I’m consciously aware of every single note that I’m GOING to play a split second before I play it. Not groups or patterns, but every single detail. This doesn’t happen constantly and in every situation yet as I haven’t really nailed the nervous coordination yet. My goal is to be able to do that with everything all the time.
Legato seems to be the path to control. For me, once I’m cool to play something very legato and perfectly in time, I can put any kind of articulation, dynamics, feel, etc. on it. This is, again, more of a left hand issue. Regardless of how you time the plucking of the note with the right hand, your left hand has to hold a note down as long as is possible before the next note is struck. I know, it seems intuitive. But when you’re really wailing around, the notes tend to get shorter because, I think, of an urgency to get the note sounded and get to the next one in time. That tends to leave you relegated to playing the note however you can get it played, which often means the note name is the only factor that plays into your musical statement. I believe this is part of where Victor Wooten is coming from with his “2 through 10” concept which points out to players that just the note name itself has only a small role in music. Integrating other factors like articulation, dynamics, timbre, feel (and 5 more that I can’t remember…sorry Vic), and more specifically variations thereof, give the music much more meaning.
I hope this is helpful for somebody. Keep working and remember, there’s no substitute for knowing what you’re doing!
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Photo: Self-portrait by Melissa Auf Der Maur
Melissa Auf Der Maur is a Canadian bassist who played with Tinker, Hole, and The Smashing Pumpkins. She released her own work and is a photographer with photos published in Nylon, Bust, and National Geographic. She released her ‘90s Rock Memoir “Even The Good Girls Will Cry” on 17 March 2026.
KB: Did you always want to be a singer-musician growing up?
I’ve played music my whole life. In school, I played trumpet and sang in a children’s choir, so music was always within me. My mother was the first female disc jockey on the Montreal airwaves; her record collection played a huge role in my inspiration and love of music.
KB: When did you start playing bass, and why this instrument?
When I was 19, the early 90s music explosion began to percolate in tiny clubs around the world. I was lucky to be a ticket girl at Montreal’s underground music club. In one year, I saw Hole, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, White Zombie, and The Breeders – all had female bass players. That’s when the seed was planted. By the age of 22, I was the bass player of Hole.
KB: Which brands of basses have you used in your career, and which one are you using now?
The first bass that I learned on was a vintage Squier Precision. Hole was sponsored by Fender guitars, so I upgraded to Fender Custom Shop Precisions. That is all I play, but I have a cool vintage 8-string Greco that I use on recordings to thicken up guitar parts.
KB: What equipment do you use or have you used with your basses?
Ampeg SVT amps and cabinets, a couple of Sans-Amp pedals, and that is it.
KB: How did you become a member of Hole, and what is your fondest memory of that time?
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was helping scout a replacement for (RIP) Kristen Pfaff, Hole’s bass player. My band, Tinker, opened for them on the Siamese Dream tour, so Billy had seen me play and could vouch for me. Courtney trusted her talented friend, and that was it. I initially said “no thank you” due to my commitment to my photographic studies and the drama and chaos surrounding the band during the “Live Through This” album release. Courtney took it as a good sign that I said no, so convinced me to reconsider, and soon after, I accepted their invitation, in the name of helping put females in the male-dominated landscape of rock music. My fondest memory is every show we played as a mostly female band, symbolizing what a woman could do in a rock band. Every show had a purpose: get more women to play music.
KB: You are a photographer as well. What makes a great picture? Do you shoot in color or b/w?
I started shooting photographs at age 15. Initially only shot black & white and worked in the art school darkroom. In university, I took a color photography course, and shifted mostly and forever to that, because it was easier to process film on the road when I joined a rock band. I experimented with many cameras, point and shoots, manual, polaroids, medium format, and vintage finds. The trick to a good photograph is to shoot many and all the time – the magic is in the edit and selection process.
KB: Are there artists you would love to collaborate with or wish you had?
??I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite musicians in my career. I would still love to collaborate with a new generation heavy electronic artist on an analog bass, heavy electronic drums, and synths collaboration project. Take me out of my usual zone, merging the past and future: my love of 80s dark new wave and new artists exploring that genre. It was very futuristic back then, and we are now, after all, living in the future. I am in the mood to play bass to heavy beats I want to dance to.
KB: What are your 7 favorite bass lines in music across all genres? And why these 7?
“Mountain Song” – Jane’s Addiction (love a rambling, rolling bass line – feels like the ocean waves)
“Black Top – Helmet” (was the first bass line I taught myself)
“Gold Dust Woman” – Hole from “The Crow 2” Soundtrack (it was my first bass line contribution to the band)
“Get Ready” – The Temptations (Motown just feels so good, because of the bass)
“Lucretia My Reflection” – Sisters of Mercy (makes me want to hit the dance floor and play bass simultaneously)
“Be My Druidess” – Type O Negative (full chord bass playing at its best by iconic, demonic, Peter Steele, RIP)
“Romantic Rights” – Death from Above (1979 – unique distorted overdriven tone, combined dance rhythm and melodic intelligence, all in one shot – also! Shout out to a bass & drum only band, which is awesome, and we should have more of, but the bass player needs to be a killer to fill that role.
KB: What are you currently up to?
Releasing my ‘90s Rock Memoir “EVEN THE GOOD GIRLS WILL CRY”. Visceral healing process, it was to get it out of me and write it, but I suspect the real magic will begin by putting it into the world and reflecting with others on what the magic of the ‘90s was all about. Powerful music decade that carried us into what is now a brave new world of digital corporate weirdness – may the past shed a light on our future. That’s my hope for this book release and tour.
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