How to Play Bass Guitar

Transcript Writing a Bass line involves incorporating all the knowledge that we have talked about before. We want to use everything we have available to us, all the notes that we know, all the rhythms that we know, good time fill, everything that is just part of being a good musician. So, when you are …

Transcript I’m going to show you a really strong fingering to play B Major Scale on Bass Guitar. It starts on the second fret on the A string, the note B. We’re going to play the fourth fret on the same string, C sharp, skip to the first fret on the D string, D sharp. …

Transcript The major 7th chord uses four notes that come from the major scale. In this case, we’re gonna play “G”. So the G-Major 7th chord is “G”, “B”, “D” and F-Sharp. Those notes are the root, the 3rd, the 5th and the 7th scale tones. So even though we’re only playing four notes, we …

Transcript Here’s how to play F major triad on bass guitar. We’re gonna take our 3 notes from the F-major scale. The root, the 3rd note from the scale, and the 5th note from the scale. Our root in this case is F. Our 3rd note from the scale is A, and our 5th note …

Transcript E minor is made up of three notes:: E, G and B. Those notes are our root, our third and our fifth, and they get their names from their position in the E minor scale. In the case of E we have our low E, our third will be G, third fret on the …

Transcript This is how to play the D Major Triad on the bass. D Major Triad is made up of 3 notes that come from the D major Scale. The root D, the 3rd which is F Sharp and the 5th which is A. We can play 2 octaves of that Triad by playing our …

Transcript I want to give you a few exercises for practicing pentatonics. You can start pentatonic scales not only on the roots but also on every note of the scale. And this will help you get more fluid and get more familiar with the pentatonics. I’ll give you two examples of how to practice it. …

Transcript Here’s how to play an E major triad on the bass guitar. We’re gonna start with our note E as out root. We’re gonna take out third and fifth notes from the E major scale. Those are G sharp, our third. And B, our fifth note from the E major scale. In order to …

Transcript we use string crossing technique to talk about playing two notes are drectly next to each other when we have large leaps sometimes the strings in the middle over the string we just finished playing will start ringing and cause unnecessary sound we just want to be hearing the note that we were playing …

Transcript So beats basically can be divided into groups of two’s or three’s which means you can divide a beat either in two parts like one and two and three and four and.You can also divide it in groups of three.In the case of three’s you might say triplet,triplet,triplet,triplet so for my extra beat I …

Transcript I’m going to teach you a really strong fingering for the A-Major scale. A-Major has three sharp notes. So we have C-Sharp, F-Sharp and G-Sharp. The rest of them are just the normal note names. We start on “A” with the open string. “B” is the second fret. C-Sharp is the fourth fret. Now …

Transcript A F minor triad is made up of three notes F, a flat, and C that are root,minor third and fifth.Now’s come from the position in the F minor scale.A root is F,1st fret and E string .A minor third is A flat , 4th fret and E string.And a fifth is C,3rd fret …

Transcript The A minor triad will be made up of the root, 3rd and 5th, which refer to the root, 3rd note, and 5th note of the A minor scale. Our root will be A, our 3rd note of the A minor scale would be C, and the 5th note of the A minor scale …

Transcript Here is how to play the C minor triad on the electric bass. The C minor triad will be mad up of three notes that come from our C minor scale. The root, the third and the fifth. The root of our C minor scale, is “C”. the third, is “E flat”, and “G” …

Transcript So I wanna get started talking about the basics of playing notes. We wanna talk about note names and learning where the notes are in the instrument. When you are playing the electric bass, there is these 4 strings and each have a name that go along with them. So, the way music works …

Transcript There are a lot of ways to play a one-octave scale on a bass guitar, but there’s also a nice simple formula for beginners, so that you can get the sound in your ear and you can get the feel of the notes under your fingers. My formula is 2-4, 1-2-4, 1-3-4. So if …

Transcript Here is how to play the F minor scale on the Bass Guitar. Instead of thinking about F minor as being F Major with the lowered third note, a lowered sixth note and a lowered seventh note. We can think about a little easier by just playing the notes of our A-Flat major scale, …

Transcript The minor 7th chord has 4 notes: a root, a minor third, a fifth, and a minor 7th. Let’s use G as an example. The G-minor 7th chord is going to be G (our root), B-flat (our minor third), D (our fifth), and F (our minor 7th). G, B-flat, D, and our lowered 7th, …

Transcript I wanna talk about understanding octaves on the bass guitar. There are seven note names that we use in our musical scale. So every time we play the eighth note, it’s gonna have the same name as the note name from the first note. This is basically an octave. So an A for instance, …

Transcript We can think about A minor as lowering the 3rd, lowering the 6th note of the scale and lowering the 7th note of the scale. But that can get really confusing. An easier way to think about it would be to start thinking about a C major scale on A. Or C major scale …

Transcript Here’s how to hold your bass guitar properly while sitting. You want the bass to balance on your knee so that it’s not tipping one way or the other. That’s different for every instrument, so I suggest putting it on the knee that you’re going to be resting it on and allowing it to …

Transcript Here’s how to play a Major Pentatonic Scale. The Pentatonic Scale has five notes. It’s comprised of the first three notes of a major scale,and then the fifth and sixth note on the major scale. In the key of C, we start at C and we play a C, D, E, G, A, which …

Transcript When it comes to positioning your right hand on the bass guitar, I like to start with the pick-up that’s closest to the middle, between the fretboard and the bridge. On this bass it’s easy, because there is only one set of pick-ups. Some like a jazz bass series will have two sets, so …

Transcript We can think about B minor as B major with a lowered 3rd note, a lowered 6th note, and a lowered 7th note, but this can be a lot of information to think about when we’re trying to play music. So instead, we can think about it as a D major scale, starting on …

Transcript The pentatonic scale has 5 notes. It’s comprised of the first 3 notes, and then, the 5th and 6th note of the minor scale on a bass guitar. We talked about starting the major pentatonic scale on C. The minor pentatonic scale will have the same notes, if we play A minor pentatonic, starting …

Transcript Here’s how to play the chromatic scale on the electric bass guitar. The chromatic scale is just playing every note without skipping any of the notes. So there’s gonna be twelve notes in the scale and it’s just playing every single note one fret at a time all the way up. So if we …

Transcript This is how to prepare your hands to play the bass guitar. Before I even start playing I make sure I wash my hands, clip my fingernails, make sure everything is ready for me when I get started. I like to keep my hands warm all the time; in the winter I definitely wear …

Transcript So when you have a new string you need to put arms, then you run it either through the body or through the bottom of the bridge each guitar built differently so depends what you are using is you run the string from the bridge across the finger board up to the head stack. …

Transcript Coordinating your right hand with your left hand when playing is a matter of starting each note at the same time with both fingers. So we want to get our left hand in place over the note that we want to play, you can pick any note you want. You want to start the …

Transcript For basis bass plucking technique, this is a technique we’re gonna use our right hand, and we’re just gonna rest our finger on the string and the most important thing for getting a full sound is just to let your finger drop into the string next to it or below it. We put pressure …

Transcript So this is understanding the fret part for the base guitar. The frets are the metal bars that run vertically along the neck of the base guitar and those change the notes we’re playing. So as we move up a string for each fret you get a different note. The fifth fret, the second …

Transcript The blues scale is a minor pentatonic scale with one extra note. We’re gonna play it in the key of E. We’ll find E on the 7th fret of our A string, G on the 5th fret of the D string. Now, A, now, B-flat, that’s the added note. B, D, on the 7th …

Transcript When we talk about chord patterns on the bass, we are always gonna be talking about playing chords instead of scales, as referring to the notes that they hold in the scale. So, if we’re talking about a major chord, we’ll talk about it in terms of the root, which is the 1st note …

Transcript The circle of fifths is the circle of the twelfth notes in order as we go clockwise they each go up by a fret. So C five notes up goes up to G which is the next one we see to it’s right. G five notes up goes up to E and it goes …

Transcript I wanna talk a little bit about reading bass clef and music notation. We know it’s bass clef because of the symbol we see furthest to the left on the diagram. We see that there are notes that alternate names on the spaces and the lines. We can find our lowest A by finding …

Transcript A major triad is the 1st, 3rd, and 5th note of any major scale. In the case of C, as an example, the three notes in the major triad would be C, E, and G. We can practice the C major triad by starting at any of those three notes. On the root, on …

Transcript Now I’m going to talk about the Root Fifth Flat Seventh. This relationship could be used a lot in Pop Music, Rock Music and especially in Blues. If we start with our note E, the seventh fret on A string, we know that the fifth is right below it on the E string. The …

Transcript This is how you play a major scale and talk about the major scale we have to talk about the host step and half steps a host step means you skip in between the two notes a half step step means you don’t skip any notes a host step will always jump over one …

Transcript Understanding rhythm is just about understanding how the notes are playing are arranged in time. As a note gets a count we’re going to call that our strong note. So, if it’s 4 4 we’re talking about a quarter note feel. That’s any music that just feels like 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, …

Transcript Here’s how you play a G sharp on the bass guitar. G sharp is gonna be one half step higher than our open G string, the first string, which is the one furthest away from you when you’re playing the instrument. So, this is the open G. The first fret will be G sharp. …

Transcript Here’s how you play the note G on the bass guitar. G is the name of the open string that’s furthest from us which is the first string on the bass guitar. So that’s a G. But we can also find it by knowing that the open string is going to be the same …

Transcript Now I wanna talk about how to play the note F on the bass guitar. So if we know that E is the name of our lowest string, when it’s just completely open, then if we pressed on the first fret, we’re gonna get F. The same is true for our D-string, which is …

Transcript Here’s how to play the note E on the bass guitar. The note E is the open string that’s closest to you, the 4th string. So if we just play the string alone, that’s the note E. We can find it a lot of different places, because the notes all repeat themselves over and …

Transcript Here’s how to play the note D Sharp on the bass guitar. In order to find any note that ends with sharp or flat we have to find the two notes that surround it which are regular letter names. So D sharp and E flat we can find by finding in the notes that’s …

Transcript We can find the note D on the bass guitar by finding the second string and playing it open. You can also find it in a few different ways. We know that our open strings play the same note as the fifth fret of the string that’s lowest next to it. So, we have …

Transcript So, the way we’re going to find C Sharp and D Flat on the bass guitar is by finding C and D and finding the note that’s in between them. We know that the third string, A open will get us to D and get us to C Sharp, where we really want to …

Transcript Here is how you play the note “C” on the bass guitar. So if our third string open is “A”; which is the string seconds closest to you, we are going to skip one fret to get to “B”, and then there is no skip between “B” and “C”. So the third fret on …

Transcript Here’s how you play the note A Sharp on the bass guitar. So, if we know that our open string is A, which is the string that’s second closest to us. And we call that String 3, because it goes from the top, 1, 2, 3. If we know that this is A, then …

Transcript Here’s how to play The Mixolydian Mode or Dominant Scale. Mixolydian scale can be thought of as a major scale with a lowered seventh. But another way to think about it is also a major scale starting on the fifth degree. if you use the key of C as an example, we’re going to …

Transcript Here’s how you play a half-diminished chord, also known as a minor 7th chord with a flat 5th. The half-diminished chord is a diminished triad with a regular minor 7th. If we use “G” as our example, we play our “G” diminished triad which is “G” with a flat 3rd, B-Flat. And a flat …

Transcript Now let’s talk about intervals and what that means in music. An interval is the amount of space between one note and the next. Starting on any root note, we can talk about the space between each of the notes that can be related to. We’re going use A as our reference point to …

Transcript I wanna talk about the basics of rock music. Rock music is often based on very simple harmonies and very simple rhythms used in infectious ways. The driving beat is really what makes rock music rock music. Harmonically the rock music is based on minor pentatonic scales. What I was just playing was based …

Transcript The note B is gonna be a whole step above A. And when we say whole step we mean the we’re skipping one whole fret. So if we know that our third string or the string that’s second closest to you is an A when no fingers are on it. Then when we press …

Transcript This is how to understand the eighth note triplet rhythm. The eighth note is dividing a quarter note into 2 parts. So, if we have even eighth notes dividing a quarter note, it sounds like this. If the beat is; the beat is the quarter note. 1, 2, 3, 4. Even eighth notes are …

Transcript The shuffle and swing rhythm is based on the 8-note triplet. So the 8-note triplet is played tri-pl-et tri-pl-et tri-pl-et. This rhythm is really popular in American music in particular. We hear it a lot in the music of the south, rockabilly, country, blues especially. We hear it in music from Chicago, specifically blues. …

Transcript Popping and slapping is a technique that can be used a lot in funk playing but it can also be used to spice up other styles of music that you might run into. Basically I’d like to think about using the thumb, which does the slapping, right above the end of the finger board …

Transcript When we’re playing bass, keeping a steady beat on the instrument, playing with good time and playing with a good time field are the most important things we can do. Even if we don’t play anything fancy at all, just playing with good time, good rhythm, you will work as a bass player and …

Transcript Bass guitar tabs are an easier way to read notation because they just give you the fret number where the note is that you’re going to play. Unlike normal musical notation, tabs are just numbers on 4 lines. The 4 lines represent the 4 strings of the electric bass. In the example shown, there’s …

Transcript So, in order to teach yourself a song that you heard that you really like my first advice is to just break it down into a smaller section. Maybe you want to learn the whole song, but maybe that’s not the right place to start. So, find the part that you like the most, …

Transcript Muting strings is the process of dampening strings, and then playing them. We usually do it with our palm on the strings near the bridge. It can be a really effective technique. You can start by just playing open strings. It is not that necessarily important to be muting all the strings all at …

Transcript Here are some exercises to practice the Roots and Fifths in the bass guitar. Now that we figured out the shape of our roots and fifths, we can move that around in a few different ways. We can start by just going up chromatically, which means we’re going to play all the notes. so …

Transcript Here’s how you play the note F-sharp on the bass guitar. F-sharp is gonna be located between F and G. We know that all the notes that are between two notes that just have letter names, like F and G, are always gonna have two names to them. So, F-sharp is one note above …

Transcript Here’s how you play roots and fifths on the bass guitar. Any note that is home base for us we’re gonna call the root, and fifth means that it’s five notes up. So that means five letter names up. So if we start with our E, seventh fret on the A-string, and we go …

Transcript Playing scales, sometimes at first seems daunting. It seems like material that you don’t want to cover. I know it can be boring. But, for me it’s a daily ritual. Scales are a way that we can learn different ways around the fingerboard. We can refreshing ourselves on the material. We can. It’ll cause …