new player
Question:
><< i just got a bass 5 days ago. does anyone have any adviceideasopinions >for >the bass player just starting out?
You’ll be light years ahead if you shove that bass under the bed. Play the guitar a few years first.. I know your muttering under your breath (cursing me for being so stupid). Learn something about chord structure, phrasing, dynamics etc. Don’t shortcut the process. A bassist not only helps maintain the rhythm but outlines the harmonic direction. Bass has more responsibility than any yesterday… Hawkeye8th "over the hill but still giving advice"
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> i am into classic rock and am influenced by bassists like: > paul mccartney > jack bruce > geddy lee > billy sheean > phil lesh
I am a big Phil Lesh fan and a new bass player myself. Here is my advise: Do not try to immitate Phil Lesh! Not yet, anyway. You’ll drive yourself crazy. — Alan, San Francisco, CA Share what you know. Learn what you don’t.
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Alex, I think that you should do three things: 1) Get in touch with a good teacher. You need to learn basics about rhythm and harmony from someone who has knowledge and experience. If you go the method book route, you’ll most likely end up learning bits and pieces of different concepts – instead of the ‘whole picture’. 2) Sit down with some of your favorite records and learn the basslines. This will help you develop a good ear and ‘timefeel’ – plus it’s fun to do. 3) Get together with some other beginning musicians and try to start playing together. You need to learn how to play in a group (that’s what bass is all about, right?). Try to find people who are a step or two ahead of you (in terms of experience). Hope this helps and good luck! Rob Miller Philadelphia, PA
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I think that I’ll second this. I knew a guy who got a teacher who was not specifically a bass player, but he had a bachelors (maybe masters) in Music Comp. Anyway. He had been playing for like, maybe a max of three months, probably a lot closer to one, and was already practicing stuff that was on my level at the time (about 5 good months of practice) and probably alot farther than that. Anyway, I’m sure he’s a better bassist than I am now… Hm…Maybe I should get a teacher… El Stephen – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> Alex, > I think that you should do three things: > 1) Get in touch with a good teacher. You need to learn basics about rhythm > and harmony from someone who has knowledge and experience. If you go the > method book route, you’ll most likely end up learning bits and pieces of > different concepts – instead of the ‘whole picture’. > 2) Sit down with some of your favorite records and learn the basslines. This > will help you develop a good ear and ‘timefeel’ – plus it’s fun to do. > 3) Get together with some other beginning musicians and try to start playing > together. You need to learn how to play in a group (that’s what bass is all > about, right?). Try to find people who are a step or two ahead of you (in > terms of experience). > Hope this helps and good luck! > Rob Miller > Philadelphia, PA
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<< i just got a bass 5 days ago. does anyone have any adviceideasopinions for the bass player just starting out? practiceexercises? easy songs? tabs? let me know please. i am into classic rock and am influenced by bassists like: paul mccartney >> Have some friends teach you some songs. Get some tapes to learn the scales and know your fret board. Judas Priest has good solid bass lines that are simple and will give you a rock solid foundation. MIKE
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hi all thanks for your help. i appreciated all your suggestions and thoughts. the exercises for my fingers will help (i am a guitar flatpicker) and the notes on scales were excellent. kudos to this ng. alex — —– "When you look at a photograph of the earth you don’t see any borders…" -Graham Nash http://www.guitargalaxy.cjb.net
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Practice, practice, practice. You already knew that. However I do recommend getting a couple of beginner bass books. These books usually come with a cd that lets you play along with the author, and allows you to get a reference for what the tone is supposed to sound like. These books also have an exersice regimend that you must follow every day in order to improve your technique. It takes time, but it’s a lot of fun. Tabs are available anywhere online, but the main archive, BTA, has been closed down. Some easy songs may include simple walking bass lines, oldies rock(1950’s) which never seems to have more than 4 chords in the average song. Earth angel is a good one, and it’s chords are used in about a dozen other songs. Anyway, have fun, and practice every day!!! -CopperKid – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – >hi >i just got a bass 5 days ago. does anyone have any adviceideasopinions for >the bass player just starting out? practiceexercises? easy songs? tabs? let >me know please. >i am into classic rock and am influenced by bassists like: >paul mccartney >jack bruce >geddy lee >billy sheean >phil lesh >thanks >alex >– >—– >"When you look at a photograph of the >earth you don’t see any borders…" >-Graham Nash >http://www.guitargalaxy.cjb.net
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Hi Alex, I’m a relatively new player — about two years. And what I’m about to suggest really helped me, because it felt good, it helped cement the scales in my mind, and made me want to practice a lot. This "method" augments your scale playing, and you might want to wait until you have practiced the patterns for the major, minor and pentatonic scales just enough to be comfortable with them. Find a CD by someone you *really* like. (And don’t pick Jaco Pastorius.) McCartney is good. The more recent the CD the better, because these tend to be more on standard pitch and require no re-tuning. Put one of the songs on repeat. Find the key the song is played in. This might take some hunting at first, but you’ll know when you find it. Lightly play a major, minor, or pentatonic scale over the song in that key until you figure out what type of scale the song uses. Now try to play a note that sounds good at the beginning of each measure — the "root" of the measure, if you will. Not so surprising, for most music, these notes will all be on the scale that you discovered earlier. Now you are playing. Pretty soon you’ll be bored with just playing the chord roots and will find yourself adding notes and walking up and down that scale in anticipation of the next chord’s root. Let the melody line lead the way. The neat part is that you’ll find McCartney doing this too, sometimes right along with you. For a lot of music you’ll also quickly discover the bass riffs — the repetitive and sometimes signature bass phrases that are used in the song. I used this approach in the beginning to learn all the bass parts to Jonny Lang’s "Lie To Me" album. Don’t worry about getting it perfect in the beginning, because as you progress and come back to practice those first songs again, you’ll find your fingers automatically doing things that either sound better or are more like the actual bass line on the CD. You unconsciously learn new tricks, both with your fingers and your ears that continually enhance your playing ability. Every new song you learn helps make one you already know even better. The main idea here is to keep you interested — to allow you to actually play with someone you enjoy listening to — to create some chemistry that will let all this stuff really sink in and make sense in a contextual setting. One warning. Don’t let this feel-good approach keep you from the drills. Learn the scales, everywhere they can be played. Think about the names of the notes you are playing, especially the important ones: the root, the third, the fifth, the seventh and the octave, and notice their physical relationship to the root on the fingerboard for any particular type of scale. Go below the root on your way down, as far as you can, and above the octave on your way up as far as you can. And ALWAYS practice scales with a metronome or drum machine. I recommend the "Gig Bag Book or Bass Scales". It covers 15 popular scales (and modes) in all keys, with staff, tabs and fingerboard illustrations. It’s not a course — just a reference, but I find myself referring to it a lot. There are also some great bass courses that have play-along CDs that are missing only the bass part, which the book teaches you how to play. Most of these are geared toward a particular style of playing — rock, blues, whatever. Get a teacher, or at least someone that can coach you and answer your questions while you have your bass in your hands instead of a computer keyboard. Good luck. You picked a great instrument, no matter what your guitar-playing friends say. :-) — Gary Rodgers, KE4GI
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> hi > i just got a bass 5 days ago. does anyone have any adviceideasopinions for > the bass player just starting out? practiceexercises? easy songs? tabs? let > me know please. > i am into classic rock and am influenced by bassists like: > paul mccartney > jack bruce > geddy lee > billy sheean > phil lesh > thanks > alex > — > —– > "When you look at a photograph of the > earth you don’t see any borders…" > -Graham Nash > http://www.guitargalaxy.cjb.net
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hi i just got a bass 5 days ago. does anyone have any adviceideasopinions for the bass player just starting out? practiceexercises? easy songs? tabs? let me know please. i am into classic rock and am influenced by bassists like: paul mccartney jack bruce geddy lee billy sheean phil lesh thanks alex — —– "When you look at a photograph of the earth you don’t see any borders…" -Graham Nash http://www.guitargalaxy.cjb.net
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There’s a book called "The Bass Player Book" put out by the publishers of Guitar Player Magazine. It’s got one section of exercise and how-to, one about equipment, and one about important bass players, including a lengthy interview with your buddy McCartney. Check it out. About twenty bucks. But first buy a metronome. Brian J. Chase – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – > hi > i just got a bass 5 days ago. does anyone have any adviceideasopinions for > the bass player just starting out? practiceexercises? easy songs? tabs? let > me know please. > i am into classic rock and am influenced by bassists like: > paul mccartney > jack bruce > geddy lee > billy sheean > phil lesh > thanks > alex > — > —– > "When you look at a photograph of the > earth you don’t see any borders…" > -Graham Nash > http://www.guitargalaxy.cjb.net
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First off welcome to the bass playing world. When I first started out I asked my brother the same things and he told me to make a fist and try to fit it between your fingers of your other hand so you can stretch your fingers farther and beleive it or not it really worked. Go slow, no one becomes great over night. It takes practice to become really good. A good exercise to do is play from the A on your E string (5th fret) and go A, A sharp, B, C, which are frets 5, 6, 7, 8 and by doing this you are forced to use your pinky which a lot of people don’t use. An easy song to play is "another brick in the wall pt2." by pink floyd. It’s easy, fun and you can do many variations with it. Learn to read music and don’t just rely on tab. That’s all i can think of right now but I’m sure I will think of somehting later. I hope my ideas help.
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> hi > i just got a bass 5 days ago. does anyone have any adviceideasopinions for > the bass player just starting out? practiceexercises? easy songs? tabs? let > me know please. > i am into classic rock and am influenced by bassists like: > paul mccartney > jack bruce > geddy lee > billy sheean > phil lesh > thanks > alex > — > —– > "When you look at a photograph of the > earth you don’t see any borders…" > -Graham Nash > http://www.guitargalaxy.cjb.net
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I believe the single most important thing you should start doing now is learn your scales and practice them every day. not only will you know what to play but your get really good fingerboard practice. scales. scales. scales. it also helps to learn to read music. other than that, peter pickow has a good book out called ‘play the bass guitar’. also, it helps to talk to other bass players. check out www.talkbass.com.
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> hi > i just got a bass 5 days ago. does anyone have any adviceideasopinions for > the bass player just starting out? practiceexercises? easy songs? tabs? let > me know please. > i am into classic rock and am influenced by bassists like: > paul mccartney > jack bruce > geddy lee > billy sheean > phil lesh > thanks > alex > — > —– > "When you look at a photograph of the > earth you don’t see any borders…" > -Graham Nash > http://www.guitargalaxy.cjb.net
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"Troy Bowman" <aslan> spake thusly: : I believe the single most important thing you should start doing now is : learn your scales and practice them every day. not only will you know what : to play but your get really good fingerboard practice. scales. scales. : scales. it also helps to learn to read music. other than that, peter pickow : has a good book out called ‘play the bass guitar’. also, it helps to talk to : other bass players. check out www.talkbass.com. Let me amplify on this a bit. "scales" really consist of two parts. The first thing you need to do is learn what note is at every fret on every string. So if somebody says the song is in "A" you need to know immediately (like automatically by heart) where every "A" on that bass neck is. Every day take one string and go over and over the note names on the various frets until you’ve got the whole thing down cold. The next thing for "scales" is the pattern of fingerings for a given scale (major, minor, pentatonic, etc.) So starting at a given note, you have to know the pattern to play a given scale as far up and down the scale as you can go with the strings you have. As Troy notes, the key is practice, practice, practice. Given a scale then next step is to get onto harmony. For example, a "C" chord consists of the notes C, E, G. If you go up a "C" scale: C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C. You notice that the C chord uses the 1, 3, and 5th note going up the scale. Hence to play bass notes that create a "C" chord harmony, you can choose from those or make an arppegio (play the notes C,E,G in sequence). At this point you are starting to get into the more fun part of bass playing and I’d suggest getting a couple of beginner videos which typically have some classic bass patterns for you to try to copy. Often these patterns fit a large number of classic rock songs. Don’t get the advanced videos by monster players as that will just depress you. (Heh, they depress ME!) But just the simple ones to get you going. So hey, welcome to bass and keep thumpin’! — Benjamin Jacoby | "Some rob you with a six-gun and some with (SPAM GUARD! Delete the no spam letters in name to email.)
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