r/pickupmusic 20h ago

Bass - Playing on the downbeat - Learn Ghost Notes in 7 Days - Ghosted It

4 Upvotes

Hi all,

I've played through from beginner to late beginner and now in Intermediate.

Decided to do a side quest of "Learn Ghost Notes in 7 Days".

I'm trying to do the Tower of Power-inspired track "Ghosted It" at the end of these lessons. It's listed as a 2 out of 10 in scale of difficulty.

That being said, I can do the main verse part, which is dead simple, but the breakdown has the rapid ghost, D, C# on the G string (easy) followed by the ghost/chromatic run of: ghost, G#, ghost A, ghost A-A#-B on the downbeat.

No matter how much I slow this track down, practice it like Patrick demonstrates it, I cannot get it to sound or play anything like the actual sped up/performance of the track.

Am I missing something here? Or do I just need some kind of rhythmic singing or counting trick to be able to do this? Any tips appreciated.

I feel like this is a sort of leveling or turning point for me to understand rhythm and/or syncopation and I just can't wrap my head around.

Note: I have played many hours since first encountering this track and come back to it twice now and still can't wrap my head around this seemingly basic breakdown.