How to Play Bass Guitar

Transcript The C Major scale is going to be all the notes without any sharp or flat notes, just the basic note names. C is the third fret on the A string. You play the open D one string away. You play E second fret on the D string. F is the third fret on …

Transcript I’m going to show you a really strong fingering for how to play the D Major scale on the bass guitar. The open string is D. We play E, the second fret of the same string. F sharp is the 4th fret, and now we play open G. A is the 2nd fret on …

Transcript This is how to play the E major scale on a bass guitar. I’m going to show you a really strong fingering to playing the E major scale. We’re gonna start with the lowest note on the whole instrument with the open E, our second note is second fret on that same string, F …

Transcript This is how to play the F major scale on the bass guitar. We’re gonna start with our low F, first fret on the E-string. Our second note is gonna be G, third fret on the E-string. Now we go to open A, next string. B-flat is first fret. Now C, third fret on …

Transcript This is how to play the G major scale on the bass guitar. G, our lowest note, is gonna be on the E string, 3rd fret on the E string. And immediately, we skip up to the open A. B is 2nd fret on the A string, and C is 3rd fret, right next …

Transcript This is how to play the C minor scale on a bass guitar. We can think about C minor as C major with a lowered third note, a lowered sixth note and a lowered seventh note. But, a lot of this can be confusing when we are trying to play music. Instead, I’d like …

Transcript I want to talk about how to play the D minor scale on the bass guitar. We can think about D minor as D major and lower the third note, the sixth note and the seventh note of the scale and a lot of that can be a lot of information when we’re just …

Transcript The A major triad is made up of 3 notes from the A-major scale. The root, A, the 3rd note, C-sharp, and the 5th note, E. I’m gonna play for you a 2 octave A-major triad. Our first note is gonna be A, the open string. Now, C-sharp, the 4th fret on the A …

Transcript Here is how to play a B major triad on the electric bass. The B major triad will be made up of three notes from our B major scale. The root, the third, and the fifth. In the case of B, its going to be be “B”; our root, “D#” (D sharp); our third, …

Transcript A C major triad is made up of three notes from our C major scale. C, our root, E, our third and G our fifth. Our first note C is on the third fret of the A string. Second note E is on the second fret of the D string. And then, we can …

Transcript G major triad is made up of 3 notes in the G major scale: the root, the 3rd and the 5th. In the case of G, G is our root, and B is our 3rd, and D is our 5th. Here’s how to play the G major triad in 2 octaves on the electric …

Transcript There are three ingredients in a triad. The root, the third, and the fifth. The root and the fifth will stay the same for both minor and major triads. The only thing that changes, is the third. In the case of a major triad, the third will come directly from the major scale. If …

Transcript B minor triad will be made up of three notes, that come from the B minor scale: a root B, our minor third D, and our fifth F sharp. This is how to play the B minor triad in two octaves. Our B will be the 2nd fret on the A string. Open D …

Transcript The D-minor triad is made up of three notes, we have our D our root, our minor third F, and our fifth A. We’re gonna start with D, which is our open D string. We’re gonna reach back for our F, first fret on the E-string. And then our open A-string will be our …

Transcript So, when it comes to positioning your left hand on the base guitar, a lot of people like to position it so that, you know, one finger per fret. That can be uncomfortable for some people. If the spacing is too much for you, it’s better to play with your ring finger and your …

Transcript These are the parts of a bass guitar: we’re going to start at the head stock. The head is where all the strings end. They connect to the parts here, which are connected to the tuning pegs, and you can tune the strings independently here. That’s all connected to the neck. The front of …

Transcript When it comes to buying an electric bass guitar, the most important thing for you is comfort. You have to feel comfortable holding an instrument exactly how you are gonna hold that when you are performing. You have to feel comfortable with the weight of the instrument, you have to feel comfortable with the …

Transcript We’re going to talk about strapping on your bass guitar. You can get a guitar strap to strap onto the button at the top of the instrument. And then, strap onto the other button at the bottom. Give it a tug. Make sure they’re both are secure. You can put it over your head. …

Transcript Warm ups you can do with your right hand, are a great way to just playing an instrument when you pick it up. You don’t have to play any notes with the left hand, you can leave the left hand alone. It can rest. Or you can just mute the strings as you’re going …

Transcript The G-minor triad is made up of 3 notes: our root, our minor third, and our fifth. G-minor is G, B-flat, and D. Our low G is at the 3rd fret on the E-string. Our minor third is B-flat, first fret on the A-string. And we can use our open D-string for our fifth. …

Transcript We can think about E minor, like E major and lower the third note of the scale, the sixth note of the scale and the seventh note of the scale, that can be a lot of information. Instead, we can just think about playing our G Major scale, starting on the sixth note of …

Transcript I want to talk a little about how to tune the bass guitar with a tuner. We want to tune each string individually, so if you know the names of your strings, once you’re plugged in to the tuner, here, you can just start playing the note and seeing how it comes up. This …

Transcript Here’s how to play the G minor scale on the bass guitar. We can think about G minor like G major, and lower the 3rd note, the 6th note, and the 7th notes of the scale, but a lot of that’s just too much information when we’re just trying to play music. It can …

Transcript When we play the blues scale, we want it to come off naturally, we want it to come off relaxed, and we want it to make it sound like we really mean it. We don’t want to approach it like a scale, and when each note is exactly the same, and where each note …

Transcript It’s called the 12 bar blues because it’s three statements that are four bars each. We have an initial statement, then there’s a restatement, where the original melody gets stated in a slightly different way. Then our third statement of the 12 bar blues acts as an answer. When you put them together, you …

Transcript Now I wanna talk you through how to practice the scales that we learned. Scales are one way to talk about tonality, but they’re not always the most musical. So, we can use scales to open up our ears, we can use scales to learn the fingerboard of the bass better, and we can …

Transcript “This is how to play double stops and triple stops in basic guitar. Double stops mean that we are playing two notes in combination at the same time. Triple stops mean that we are playing three notes together. Even though this doesn’t happen on a regular basis for a lot of base players, we …

Transcript Here’s how to play a dominant 7th chord on a bass guitar. The dominant 7th is like a major 7th chord, but with a lowered 7th – the 7th is one half-step lower than a major 7th chord. If we use G as our example, we talk about the notes in the chord as …

Transcript Here’s how to play a diminished 7th chord on the bass. The diminished 7th chord is a diminished triad and a fully diminished 7th. Which is also the 6th not of the major scale. Using G as our example, we’ll use G as our root, B flat as our flat 3rd, D flat as …

Transcript Power chords get their name because they provide support because you can play the root and the fifth of a chord, giving it a wider sound and a stronger bass. Power chords can also be used in minor and major contexts because there’s no third, so it’s just an open fifth sound. You get …

Transcript Diminished triads are made up of a root, a minor third, and then a lower fifth. You can also think about it as two minor thirds. If we take the example of a B Diminished Triad, we can have B, second fret on the A String, open D, which is the minor third, and …

Transcript Jazz can be a difficult thing to try to get started in, because it’s known for complex harmonies, and often for complex rhythms. Jazz musicians frequently use the 12 bar blues form, as a form that they can improvise on. So, when we get started in jazz, the most important things to learn would …

Transcript For bass plucking exercises we need to get comfortable plucking the strings by using that technique we talked about, dragging our fingers over the strings. But we can use this with a variety of different rhythms or anything else that you want to play to make it interesting for you. So you can do …

Transcript Even before you learn any names of notes, or any of the technical stuff. To be able to put your hand down, on the finger board, in any place, let’s pick the fifth fret. Second thought, on the lowest string, and there we are gonna use what I call the bass box, which is, …

Transcript So for basic bass fretting technique, the most important thing we wanna keep in mind, is to be as close to the fret as possible while keeping your finger in the left side of the fret that you wanna play. If you’re playing a note on the first fret, you wanna be directly behind …

Transcript To go on a bass fretting exercises,what we want to do is practice getting our finger right next to the fret that we want and we’re also going to work on spacing our fingers out to learn to stretch them and to maintain our dexterity as we go down the neck. So we’re going …

Transcript The three basic ingredients to the Blues that we want talk about are the harmony, the rhythm, and the form. The most basic way that people talk about the harmony of the blues, is either talking about the minor pentatonic scale or the blues scale. If we’re talking about blues in E-flat, we’re going …

Transcript The Most important thing when you are starting to learn songs and trying to find songs to learn is that you really like the song can stress that enough so the music that you really want to be playing is always going to be the first to go if you want great baselines that …

Transcript Because the notes repeat in music – again the letter names go A through G, then it skips back to A – because that happens you get A’s in multiple places on the instrument, along with every other note. The first one we see, the lowest A that we see, on the lowest string, …