Bass Guitar Lessons: The Complete Beginners Guide

1. Introduction: Hi everyone, hope you're doing good. Welcome to this complete beginner's guide for bass guitar. My name is Mark, and I'm a full-time musician and instructor, who has over 15 years experience of teaching people of all ages and abilities from a wide mix of backgrounds. I want my classes to be fun, engaging and have a big focus on creativity, which will hopefully inspire you to continue along your own creative journey. This class is going to cover everything you need to get up and running on the bass guitar. We start simply with lessons that break down the instruments anatomy, how it's tuned, how we read the music we're learning in the former tab, and the correct techniques we need to play. Before we quickly move on to tackling a ton of riff songs and creative exercises to get you comfortable on the bass guitar in a short space of time. Once you've covered all the essential bits of knowledge you need to get to grips with and understand the bass, we'll introduce a couple of exercises to get your fingers strong and stretched, and then we'll jump straight into working on some cool riffs and sounds from a big mix of styles. There will also be more PDFs attached to this class. You'll have plenty of material to be working on, and some extra things to challenge yourself with. This class will also attack the scales and we'll introduce some handy tricks to add some real variety to your plan. I free other classes on Skillshare to focus on the guitar. This is the first and solely based around to the bass guitar. I love training classes together and I love engaging with my students. I will be available all the way along your learning journey. I keep an eye on skillshare every day, so please feel free to leave any questions whenever you wish. I'll look forward to hopefully catching you in the next lesson. Take care. 2. Class Project: Let's have a quick chat about the class project. We're going to look at a big mix of rifts and exercises that are really going to develop your playing. I'd like you to choose one of these, record yourself playing them, and then upload it to the project and resources section so we can all learn, receive feedback, and be inspired by you. I'm more than happy to provide some constructive feedback if you want. But most importantly, I just love hearing what my students are creating. I feel like recording is a great way to assess where you're at, and really be aware of how your playing is developing. If you need any help with recording, then check out this class on Skillshare. It's brilliant, covers everything you need. Or simply just record the audio or the video on your phone, upload it to YouTube and you can post the link or you could use something like SoundCloud. Please feel free to upload and share what you're creating, it'd be great to hear. Let's jump into the next lesson. 3. Anatomy: Let's have a little look at the anatomy of the instrument just so we understand a bit more about everything that's going on here. We start up here with the tuning pegs, also known as the machine heads. These are literally tuning the strings that are on our bass guitar. These strings, we have four of them. They are E, A, D, and G. We'll talk a little bit more later on about how we can remember those letters and what to do with them. Sometimes you'll see 5, 6, even 7 strings on a bass guitar, but we're sticking to four today. Working our way down, we have the nut, this is holding those strings in place. We come across from there and we work our way down the neck of the guitar. On the neck, you'll see these little metal strips, they're the frets. These are where we place our fingers behind to create different notes. Working our way down further, we have the pickups on the body of the guitar. These are literally picking up the sound, feeding the electronics so that we can hear bass notes going for an amplifier or anything else that we'd be using. On that note, I'm using an electric bass guitar today, but you do get acoustic bass guitars which amplify themselves. You should see the sound hole in the middle where they have wooden bodies and they will be able to project their own sounds nice and loud and proud. Obviously, the electrics are doing the work here once we plug into something. You also see upright basses. They would have been the first basses that were around many years ago. A few different types, but we're focusing on the electric bass today. On electric bass, you'd see dials or flick switches that will control the volume and the tone of the sound that the bass guitar is creating. Lastly, down here, we have to bridge, which is where the strings would be fit through up to here through the nut up to the tuning pegs or machine heads and then tuned. We also have these little bits that appear on the side, which is what we attach our strap to and then we can put that strap over our neck if we wanted to stand up and play. Also with these attachments where the strap goes, you can get strap locks, which literally lock the strap onto the guitar. If you're somebody who likes to move around quite a bit when you're on stage or when you're playing, it will make sure that you aren't in that embarrassing moment where your guitar goes flying off. Unless obviously you're looking to play the guitar somewhere that you probably don't want the strap knots. They're definitely worth checking out. When plugging this electric bass in, I would come out of the socket down here with a jack lead, and I'd go into an amplifier or an amp head, which is where you'd be able to control the different tone and volume, and then that would go into a speaker which would really boost the volume. Today, I'm going into a little audio interface which then links into my laptop so that I can record the bass that I'm going to be playing throughout this class. Just so you know, I'm using the bass guitar that is really good for beginners. It's not too expensive. They only cost about a couple of 100 quid, or around $300. I didn't want to come into this beginner's bass guitar class with some really fancy, expensive guitar. I feel like that in itself can be quite daunting. This is just a brand called Cort. Definitely affordable, definitely accessible for beginners. So you can check them out. Fender do some pretty good, lower price range ones as well for beginners. Yamaha. There's tons out there. Just have a bit of a research if you're looking to buy a bass if you haven't got one already. You'll find plenty of these and information on the Internet. Websites like GAK are really good. I'll put a few links in the description of this class so you can look around and see what's happening. Hopefully, that gives you a bit more knowledge of the instrument. Let's now have a look at a simple form with how we can read the music that we're learning. 4. Reading Music: When learning to read music, you've got two main forms that appear in. You've got your scored sheet music that derives from the classical world, where you'll see your crotchets and quavers and loads of really valuable information all included on that sheet, or you've got tablature which a lot of the time is abbreviated to tab. That's a much more user-friendly and quicker to access and get up and running form of reading music. That's what we're gonna cover in this lesson. You will see a lot in the rock and pop world. It's basically a very simple form of allowing us to know where we need to be on the fret-board and what strings we need to use. To start with, you will see four lines, those lines represent the strings on our bass guitar. One way of thinking about it is, if you used to lay your guitar on your lap, that finished string that's furthest away from you is the top one on the tab. That thickest string that is near to you is the bottom one. You wouldn't start to see numbers appear on these lines. If I was to see a Number 1 on the lowest, the thickest string, that means that I just play that first fret once. If I was to say a Number 3 appear on the highest, the finished string, that means that I just play the third fret. On that string, if I was to say two Number 5s, I just play the fifth fret twice, and so on. Sometimes you will see a circle or an arrow appear. This just means you play that string open. When looking at call boxes, which you will come across at some point, there will be an x from time to time. That means you don't play that string. Just to cover them quickly because there's no songs in this class to use call boxes, but it's good to have the knowledge. Here you will see similar lines, but you will have certain lines that represent the strings of the guitar, other lines that represent the frets and there will be numbers then that appear in there, they indicate what fingers you need to use on what strings and behind what frets. A few other symbols for techniques that we're going to cover later in this class are hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides. Lastly, particularly when we start to look at scales, you're going to see the symbols for sharp and flat. Stick with me because we're close to some player now. I just wanted to get all this ground working in place before we really kick on. Let's jump into the next lesson. 5. Tuning: [MUSIC] Now let's have a good chat about the strings that you're going to find on your guitar. Learn a little bit about them and then most importantly, work out how we tune them and what their names are. First thing to acknowledge is that we have four strings here. We have the thickest one closer to us and the thinnest one further away. These different thicknesses are going to create a different tone, a different sound, from our instrument. When buying strings, you will see a variety of thicknesses and each of these are going to create a slightly different tone depending what you're after. Generally, a standard set is like 0.045 up to 0.105. That's a regular standard thickness that you'd get for bass guitar strings. Next thing is you get regular, sometimes known as round wound strings, and you also get flat wound strings. Now, all of these create a slightly different sound. Most commonly you will find the regular round wound strings and they have a little bit more of an edge term, a little bit more bite. They've got a bit of an enhanced presence about them. They'll cut through an audio mix that little bit more. You'll find them a lot in rock and pop music. They have this serrated edge to them, which does mean it picks up the data on your fingers a little bit easier and they've maybe a little bit more prone to not lasting as long as a flat wound, but they're the most common string that you will find. Unusually, when you're buying a guitar from a shop, a bass guitar, you will find those strings already on there. Flat wounds tend to have a more smoother mellow sounds and you'd find these in R&B, reggae, and jazz. They won't cut through as much bigger, not maybe looking for that is that more sappy, deeper, warmer feel about what the base is creating. Sometimes on fretless bases, which is worth mentioning, bases that literally have no frets a bit like a violin, if you think of that. People have to pitch where they are just by the area and familiarity rather than having these reference points of frets, those fretless bases would tend to have flat round strings. Next thing is we want to learn the names of the strings so we can properly tune our guitar. They are from the thickest to the thinnest; E, A, D, and G. If we work our way back up, G, D, A, and E. Now there's little rhymes that make it a bit easier for us to remember the names of the strings. When I was first learning guitar and bass guitar when I was a lot younger, a more childlike rhyme that was taught to me was Eat Apples Do Good, E-A-D-G. Or you can work from the thinnest up to the thickest and you'd get a "Guitar Deserves Attention Everywhere". It's Guitar Deserves Attention Everywhere or Eat Apples Do Good, or you can make up your own one. It's just a nice little thing to have in the bank, so you can remember these strings a lot easier. Now we need to tune our instrument. A really handy thing to have is a headstock tuner. There's a picture coming up on the screen and I've got one attached to the end of my guitar already. You can pick these up for a few quid and they're definitely worth having. Now we know what letters we're looking for on our strings. We now just need to work out how to get there if our guitar isn't already tuned to the letter that we need. We're going to start with our E string. Now I've changed the tuning of these purposely so they're not already perfectly tuned to E. Now I can say by hitting that E string that I'm on D shelf, I'm not quite on E. I need to come up ever so slightly I'm turning away from me and I'm going very slowly to make sure I don't miss the sweet spot of where I want to be. A gap in small increments until that goes green, until I'm in the middle, and E lights up. I'm moving into the next string and I've got A. We can see that I've gone too sharp, so I need to turn the tuning peg back towards me. Sometimes it helps to go flat again and then work your way back up. [NOISE] I just want to creep there, regularly plucking that string as a reference point I know that I'm in A. Our next string was D. We can see from there I'm not quite where I want to be. Just need to move a little bit, [NOISE] and I'm in that sweet spot. Sometimes it can be quite fiddly. Might need a bit more tweaking than you think. But there we go. We're on D, and then we go to G. We can say we're not quite where we want to be for G. We move away. I'm turning away from me again until I get into that middle section, and I'm in G. We've now got E. Sometimes when you go back to what you've tuned, it might have changed slightly, so it's worth checking a couple of times. We can see there that's a little bit all over the place. I need to come back, make it a little bit flatter, and there you go. Then our A again, and then our D is still in good shape, and our G is sounding lovely. There's another good technique you can learn as well so you don't have to rely on something like a headstock tuner, and that is to learn to tune by ear. You start to recognize those notes when they're in tune and when they're out of tune. A way of doing that is playing on the fifth fret of the E, plucking that string, and then playing the open A underneath. Can you hear how they're the same? [NOISE] Now we've just tuned these strings so that we know that they're going to sound the same. [NOISE] I'm making sure I'm tucked nicely behind the fifth fret of these strings. We get a good clean tone, and then I play the open string underneath. I do the same for the next one. If that was our tune let's just quickly flatten that. You hear that's not right? I play my fifth fret of the A string. I want the open string to sound the same. Doesn't. We need to sharpen it a bit. We sharpen it a little, we check it, it's close. We're back in tune. Then we do the same for the G. We play the fifth fret of D, then we play the G. If I make that a bit sharp. You can hear that doesn't sound right. I've brought that down. We're now back in tune. If you can't get your hands on the headstock tuner yet or you're not quite comfortable tuning by ear for a while, that's absolutely fine, there's loads of good free apps on your phone. Check out the Fender Tune App, doesn't cost you a penny, and that will act as a tuner. Uses your phone's microphone, so we can pick up the guitar and you have a reference point for where your notes are up. Check it out. 6. Playing Technique: [MUSIC] We now need to make sure that we're holding the guitar correctly and learning how to play in the proper way. The first thing is to make sure we're sitting nice and upright. We don't want to be hunched over. That's going to cause some restrictions and you'll get some dodgy aches and pains along the way which you don't want. Make sure there's no tension in the shoulders, we're nice and loose. When we're placing the guitar down on our lap like I said earlier, you want to be nice and upright, but we also want to make sure our guitar is not sliding away from us. We don't want that battle of having to draw it back the whole time, and you don't want to be too close pushing yourself backwards. You just want it to be sitting nice and straight on your leg, on your lap. Lots of bass guitars will have a curve there, which makes it really easy to put over your leg and give you a bit more stability in your palm. They don't all have that. There's some guitars could have floor MVs that is really pointy, slide in shapes and all weird and wonderful things which can be a little bit trickier. But for us, generally you'll have that little curve there which makes it easier. Just try and find a nice comfortable spot that works for you. We then need to discuss whether we're playing with a pick or using our fingers. This is a big topic of debate for many bass players, but the most common way that you would see bass played is with your fingers. That's why I'm going to do most of this class with, but I am going deep in and out just you see and hear both approaches to focus on the fingers first, you want to make sure that your arm is coming over the body of the guitar. Then we're a slight angle, coming across the strings. We want to make sure that we're not pushing too far out because we're going to lose that stability and we're going to be a bit awkward and not be able to get the fluency that we're after. You bring your arm back, rest on the top of the body of the guitar. Then we have our wrist on a slight angle so that our fingers just point 45-degrees angle away from the strings. The next thing to discuss is where our thumb is going to be placed when we're playing with our fingers. Now you will see some bass players put their thumb on the neck of the guitar here. That's better if you've got quite long fingers because you can still move around to grab different tones across this area of the guitar. Some people it will be rested up on the Scratch plate. Some you will actually see a thumb rest which is fitted over the strings and I will rest their thumb on there. But a lot of time you will see a player rest their thumb on wherever pickup is around this center area of their body. You can't put on any pickup you want. The further back you go, you get the thinner sound. This would be more apparent on an acoustic bass, and the further up you come, you get a little bit of a warmer tone. We're going to stick around this middle area. Sometimes, lastly, you will see people just play with their thumb free. If that's their preference, that's fine. I think it needs a little bit of the controller you're after but for some people that works. Or you might see them rest their thumb on the lowest string when they play higher strings and when they get back up, they might just play a bit loose. There's lots of variations. I'm going to focus on asking you if that's okay to put your thumb on this pick-up around the middle, assuming you're using an electric bass, if not, maybe your acoustic. You can rest on the lowest string or the neck, or you might have a thumb rest. But if you've got an electric bass guitar on this pickup, it gives us a nice bit of stability and something to build from. Now we've got our thumb rest in here or wherever you've chose to. It's helping Anki your hand. If your hands are a little bit shorter, but being in the central area, you don't have to worry too far about stretching out. You got everything nice and close to you. Next, we going to look at how we're actually going to use our fingers. Let's just focus on our index finger first. We don't want to be plucking away from the bass guitar [MUSIC]. You get a horrible snappy sound. We're trying to come across the string. [MUSIC] Once you come across that string, what helps sometimes it's the rest that finger on the thumb, so you've got a reference point of where you starting on the string and then ending with the thumb. You're just gliding across looking for that nice whole smooth tone, that's applied to every string. When I go to the next one, I can come across and just rest on the string above it. Gives me a starting [MUSIC] and a finishing. Just try that for me. Each of those strings, just using that index finger, which he play that a few times. You move on to the next string and the next string, and the next string, always looking for that smooth clear sound. [MUSIC] Continuing the development of the work with our fingers, we want to be alternating the fingers were used as soon as possible in guitar playing. You'll discover as we go along through these lessons why that is so important. It really helps with your overall technique and most importantly your speed. Let's try going [MUSIC] index finger, middle finger, just on that low E string. We're just alternating the fingers that we use. Hopefully, you can already see it. If I was just doing one finger [MUSIC] I'm going to be limited quite quickly to how fast I can get. By introducing another finger [MUSIC] you can see the potential for how far I can take them. Like I said, that's going to be our main focus throughout this class. We are going to use our fingers, but I wanted to cover guitar picks as well because it's very common as well for bass players to use a guitar pick. You quite often find that if someone's come from play understand the guitar, a sixth string and then they convert it over to bass they're properly used to use in the guitar pick a lot, it'll feel more comfortable and more natural for them to introduce that style of playing into that bass guitar playing. Guitar picks come in many different sizes and really it's down to personal preference, but generally, the most common you'll see is around one to 1-1.5 millimeters thickness. The one I'm using here is a 1.4, and if I always going to be using that guitar pick, I'd be carrying in my first finger just like that and I'll be placing the guitar pick over the top, and then my farm would come on top of that. I'd be after small amount just pointing out the side. That is what would be making contact with my strings. Now slightly different here where we place our hands because we're not concentrating on this middle area for the pick up rest. We're going to place our hand down by the bridge. Then this is where a little bit of a stretch is involved to get as closer to the middle of the guitar. [MUSIC] We bring in our alternate impact that we spoke about earlier. You remember we alternate the fingers. We're going to try and do a similar thing with the guitar pick. [MUSIC] This wouldn't always be the case sometimes. [MUSIC] You just got to one downstreams. Good technique to build early on is being able to have that habit and that awareness and ability [MUSIC] to play up and down alternate in that pattern. If you don't want to rest your hand on the bridge, if it's quite hard for your hands to come across near to the center of guitar, people with short hands, shorter fingers will have that problem. You can just let your arm rest over the top of the bass guitar [MUSIC] and come down onto each string. [MUSIC] You still get a nice bit of control from where your arm is resting over the body here. It might feel a little bit earlier than first, like you haven't got much control, you will get used to that the more you do it. Hopefully you can notice the difference there already in the sound, it's a little bit scratchier when you use a guitar pick compared to the smoother tones that you get with your fingers. That's not a bad thing. Obviously, different styles of music require different tones, if you is playing something more on R&B or reggae, you're going to want more of that deeper, smoother tone. If you're playing something that's more punk, rock, metal, you're probably going to be after that more cut in, scratchy sound. Also just quickly on the note of speed, it's easier to get faster than a short space of time using a pick. [MUSIC] It's much more accessible technique to use if you wanted to get fast with your playing quite early on when you're learning. But those that start with their fingers and keep developing that speed, eventually will get to that point. It might just take him a little longer to get as fast as someone who's just using the pick. Be carefully, if you are using the pick not to catch the pick ups when you're playing, you get another scratchy sound that we're just not after. We're just looking for that brighter, clearer tone [MUSIC] that generally comes from using a pick. In a nutshell, they have different tones. It really does come down to personal preference. I'm going to focus on using the fingers in this class. If you're going to be using the pick, that's not a problem at all. Just remember what we discussed with the alternating, the picking pattern, and really try both. Why not? It's great to have both techniques in your locker. You're also going to probably hear at some point about slap bass. You'll get that a lot in things like funk, we're not going to cover that today. Maybe that's a lesson or a class for the future. 7. First Exercise: [MUSIC] Now we can get going with some profit base plan to really kick-start your journey. As a quick recap, we want to make sure our thumb's in the correct position and our fingers are just hanging over around the middle of the guitar here, and are ready to play these strings. We've practiced a little bit of our open exercise [MUSIC]. Just get warmed up by doing that again for me, just alternate in that first and second finger on that open e-string. What we're going to do now is start working on our left hand technique as well, or your right hand, whatever your fretting hand is. We're going to start to play on these frets now. [MUSIC] When you're playing on a fret, you want to make sure that you're tucked just behind the metal bar. We don't want to be on it. [MUSIC] We start to lose some of the tone and the fullness of that note. We don't want to be too far back. [MUSIC] You get that horrible buzzing sound, which is not what we're after. We want to make sure the tips of our finger are as close as to the tips as we can get, are tucked just behind that fret. [MUSIC] When we're doing that, we're making sure that our wrist is hanging nice and low. If we're too tense up like this, we really restrict the movement of our hand. We don't want our thumb coming over, we don't want our wrist tucked up, and our palm placed across the back of the neck. We want to just let it hang nice and loose and allow the tip of our first finger [MUSIC] to tuck nicely behind that fret. Our thumb is acting like a clamp at the back. It is placed along the middle of the back of the guitar. Sometimes you've got that handy line that runs there, which will help you place that finger. If not, just around the center, and we're squeezing like if you're picking anything up, your thumb and your first finger would pinch together to pick up whatever that is, we're doing a similar thing when we're playing the guitar. This try, the very beginning of this exercise, is we're just going to be open [MUSIC] on our end string and then one. Do that four times for me. While you're doing that, alternate your first and second finger. Now you will see some people when they're first learning, just quickly play with just their first finger. Which is cool, that works. You can do that. I feel like it's just good straightaway to get into that habit of working on both fingers. Why not? They're in a similar position. They both are strong as each other. You can make them as capable as each other, I believe, early on. We're going to open, one. Open with your index finger, one with your middle. Nice and slow. Let's do that four more times, 1, 2, 3, 4. We're going to continue the development of this first finger on our fretting hand by going now, [MUSIC] open, one, two, open, one, two. Anytime you can pause this lesson to keep up with what I'm doing and then come back when you're ready. Open, one, two. As we slide from that first to the second fret, don't worry about coming off. We don't need to come off the string. Further you come away, the further you have to come back. It removes that fluency that we're after. When we come back onto the first fret, [MUSIC] we want to make sure we keep that finger down enough so we get a nice smooth transition from the first to the second. I am just slightly relaxing my first finger there. It's removing the note, and then I'm just gliding across the top of the string, to get to the second fret. I could just keep my first finger pressed down all the way. Sometimes you're going to get a little rattle depending on your guitar and the way the fret is. But if you're doing that quick, you should get a nice smooth transition. Once you're comfortable, with going up, open, one, two, reverse that [MUSIC]. Open,1, 2, 1, open. Once you're comfortable there, bring the fret frame. Notice how I'm getting those little stops in-between the frets now. All that is just by squeezing the note, releasing slightly, that we spoke about just now, and gliding across the string to the next fret. Open, push, relax slightly, squeeze again, press down, relax slightly, slide across, squeeze to press down, and back. Let's add one more fret, up to the fourth. Release, slide back, release, slide back, release, slide back, open. We're really starting to strengthen that first finger now. You're getting, the left hand in my case, used to moving up and down the fret board. We're now going to introduce the second finger and start to build the strength in that one and the independence between the first and second. We start with our open again [MUSIC].We're going to go first fret, first finger, but now our second finger stretches across to fret 2. Keeping on the tip of that second finger, creating a nice bit of distance between this first and second, allowing them to stretch, making sure our wrist doesn't start to creep up and cramp our hand because now it's really important that we can stretch out. Our thumb is still in the back of the neck, our wrist is still loose, but open, one, two is being played by our first and second finger. Just practice that a few times for me. Get a nice clear tone. Lovely. We're now, going to introduce a little slide from the first finger on the first fret up to the third fret. We've got open, one, two with our first and second, and then our second comes off and our first slides to that third fret. Like I said earlier, if you need to pause this at any point to catch up, to get yourself feeling confident, go for it. Take as long as you need. Once we're at that third fret, we add our second finger again. Our second finger is now in the full-fret. Three, four, the first, and second. We're now covering four frets on the neck of the guitar. [MUSIC] Once you're comfortable there, we've got from the open to the first, all the way up to the fourth, reverse that again, four, three, with our second and first, two, one with our second and first, open. We've worked back 4, 3, 2, 1, open. The tab's been appearing on the screen, so hopefully that's helping you as well as my vocal direction. Try that once more for me. Going all the way up and all the way back. Open, 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1, open. Alternating those fingers still every time. In a nice and solid and consistent. Once you've done that on the lower string, don't just stick there, start to put that on all of the strings that are available to you. Jump down to the A, [MUSIC] just do the first finger if you want at first or add to the one and two. Moving to the next string. Remembering to do that reversal. There we go. You've covered four frets on every string. Grade your exercise to start to build the independence, the strength, and the stretching in your fingers. It's a really good building block to start from and it's going to be very valuable for the rift that we're going to learn in the next lesson. 8. The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army: [MUSIC] Now let's tackle your first riff. This is a huge tune. It's Seven Nation Army by the band White Stripes. It's a great riff, great melody, very memorable. There's a couple of different ways that you can play this and if you used to watch other videos, you might see certain musicians play it on different areas of the neck. But we're going to play in the position starting from the second fret because if very handily uses our first second finger, unlike what we were working on in the exercise from the previous lesson. I'm just going to have a quick play for that riff just so you get an idea and feel for it. [MUSIC] As you can see there, I'm starting with my first finger tucked behind the second fret of the D string and I'm starting with my index finger and my right hand, and then I'm beginning to alternate the fingers after that. Start for me by putting your first finger just beyond that second fret and then gently [MUSIC] catching it with your first finger. Now the second note is on the same string, and then after that, we play open on the J so we get. [MUSIC] Now notice there's a little bit of a pause between those first two notes on the second fret [MUSIC] before I quickly catch that open string underneath. [MUSIC] If I was to just put them really close together, those first two notes [MUSIC] takes away from the vibe of the riff is not right [MUSIC] so we have that pose. [MUSIC] After we've played that open note, we come back to our second fret of the D string. [MUSIC] Nice, so we've played four notes now, three of them are on the same fret. [MUSIC] After we've come back to that second fret, we then play third-string open as well. one thing I want to highlight here as well after we've played the open string and we go back to the second fret, we let our first finger relax a little bit so it becomes a bit straighter and it mutes the string underneath. Otherwise, we'd have that open string ringing over the rest of the riff like this [MUSIC]. We're not really after that we want to cut that string out once you've played that open G, we wouldn't remove [MUSIC] so we just slightly angle our first finger down, then mutes, that string underneath. We're not pressing down on the G, we're just literally letting me underside the pad of our first finger just catch. [MUSIC] See how it does that, [MUSIC] that smallest little movement and rising my first finger after those first two notes to allow the G to come through. Then I'm slightly bringing it down just so it catches it and mutes it, stops the note from ringing out and if we want to accidentally catch it, it wouldn't start interfering with you having notes while playing. [MUSIC] Cool. Once you've played that second fret, once we've come back to it, we now have an open day. [MUSIC] Once you've played that, we then bring our second finger up to the E string now, on the third fret and then we go back to the second fret with our first finger. We played that open D, we went up to the third fret with our second finger on the E string, and then we went back to the second fret. I'm going to play it out altogether, really slow. [MUSIC] Alternating in those fingers second fret [MUSIC] open, [MUSIC] back to the second, [MUSIC] open D fret to the E [MUSIC]. There we go. You have that whole riff and that she used a **** of a lot throughout the song. I said it's a great one to play, especially after that exercise, start to get our fingers moving, covering a few frets, and actually play in three different strings. Now just quickly to add on to that, the other variation that I mentioned about, starts on the seventh fret of the A string and it uses a little finger to get up to that. What we would be planning is the open G, they play on the 10th fret of the A so just quickly you'd get [MUSIC]. Now that's a big outstretch for our early stage of playing. The exercise we're going to do in a little while starts to use our third and fourth finger, stretching across four frets. That's a little bit of prep, a little bit of a warning for where we're going to be going. I'm going to put this whole song in the PDFs that version will be in there as well so why not go and challenge yourself? In the courses, there's a slight change where you've gone [MUSIC]. The second bar of the course goes. [MUSIC] Notice how there is the oven node that we shifted in that it repeats that free open D back to the fret back to the two. Then there's a tiny little open A, that exists very briefly in the chorus I played back-to-back. The first bar is the verse riff and the second bar is the variation it sounds like this [MUSIC] variation, free, open, free to little A, open, back to the beginning [MUSIC]. Then there's a little third fret, A open E [MUSIC] open A. I'm going to put the rest of the song in the PDFs so that you've got all the tabs there. I've walked you through that first bit, briefly described the chorus, changed the flow knows I've little notes to happen there. I always like to set my students just that little bit of a task if you want to take it home because I really think that helps develop your playing even further and a lot quicker. Have a little look at the PDFs, get confident with this first riff that we've gone through, watch that be lesson back as many times as you need, and then open up that PDF and see if you can add that little coarse variation in there as well. I want to quickly add that the first guitar class I ever put on the Skillshare, had that refund but for guitar. If you're a guitar player or if you've got friends that are family and you want to jam together, that's a great little riff that you could both play because they follow suit with each other. Like I said, it's a nice, easy one to get up and running with and you can start jamming at the same time. A link will be in the description of this class so check it out if you want. 9. Second Exercise: We're now going to look at another exercise that's going to set us up really well for the rest of the rifts and songs that we're going to cover in this class. Also just in general for your plan when you are venturing out there and trying to tackle a ton of music that you really enjoy. It's going to expand on that first exercise we did a little while ago, and it's going to start to utilize our third and fourth finger so we can get them a strong and confident as the first and the second. Similar to that first exercise, we're going to play out open E string first, so firm on the pickup, first finger, gently coming across that low E. Once you've played that once, we go first fret of the E string, second finger onto the second fret. This time our third finger is going to stretch across to the third fret. Let's practice that first. Let's get that far. We're going to go open one with our first, second and third fingers. Open 1,2,3. Now, when we stretch that third finger out, and when we stretch that second finger out, we want to make sure that each finger remains behind the fret it's playing. When that first thing is stretches out, we don't want to drag that second finger with it. This exercise is all about creating that distance between each finger, so we can start to really open our hand and cover a wider amount of space on our fretboard. The wrist stays loose and hanging low on our left hand. A thumb is still at the center of the neck and the back and our fingers are really starting to stretch out. Then we want to introduce a little finger to that. Hardest finger to bring into our base plane shares a muscle with the third, is the hardest one to strengthen. That's probably going to take a bit of work. What I suggest if you can, is when our first, second and third finger have been played and we keep them clamped down. Just practice. Going from that third to fourth. Now that's going to be tough. It's a hard thing to do early on because your fingers just ain't used to that. If it's your first time playing bass, when I was in your life, are you really doing that with your hands? The same with the tips of your fingers, you're probably noticing now you're starting to get these lines that you're going across the tips there. We're going to hopefully build calluses pretty quick, so that they'll start to get stronger. The pads of your fingers will get a lot tougher and those little lines won't appear as much or if they do, they won't hurt as much. I can say the little finger is a killer for now, but we're trying to keep it on the tips of the fingers all stretched out. Once you're able to do that open 1,2,3,4 reverse it. Great exercise for stretching that hand down. Building the strength is a big thing that'll bang on about a lot of stretching and the strength and the finger independence. Same as the previous exercise, once you've done that one string, apply it to other strings. [MUSIC] I'm just getting you up and running with this. I'm giving you all the right tools that you can then take away and really kick on with. After I've run through this with you, give it a pause if you want, and then just implement this into your practice. If you can do daily practice, brilliant. Whenever you pick up the guitar, these exercises are a great way to start. They get your hands warmed up and they get you ready for the songs that you're going to be tackling after and anything else that you're going to be doing. As a progression of that, we're now going to go open one, but then you go open again and next time you come down, you go two. Open 1, open 2. As you come down with that second, the first comes with it, it's in unison. See where this is going? We've done open 1, open 2, open 3. It's really teaching you to stretch those fingers out and most importantly, getting those fingers working as a unit, because these fingers being down behind that third finger or wherever the highest one is are helping apply the pressure, are helping that highest along the fretboard finger gain that strength that it needs to get a nice clean tone. We then stretch that full finger, we've done open 3, we now go open 4 and see how everything is stretched across that fretboard. We can reverse them. [MUSIC] Same thing, try on every string. [MUSIC] There we go another expansion of the exercise that's really progressing your plan and it's going to help a lot with this next riff that we're going to tackle. 10. Queen - Another One Bites The Dust: [MUSIC] Now that we've stretched our fingers a bit more and covered a few more frets, seems like a good idea to work on a riff that utilizes those new skills. This is Queen's, Another One Bites The Dust. Iconic riff. Another one that I'm pretty sure everyone will know or be a little bit familiar with at least. Let me just have a quick little play through how that track opens up. [MUSIC] You can hear the riff there. The first two bars has a slightly different [inaudible] to what it then does for a little while afterwards. It starts with a quick, [MUSIC] a little rundown, [MUSIC] and then after it does that twice, we just get [MUSIC] the open notes, but let's break that down step-by-step. That quick little shift at the beginning, if you can't get that straight away, don't worry, you can come back to it. But just so it's all covered in this lesson, we start with our third finger on the fifth fret of the A, tucked nicely here on that fret as always. Hopefully, what you can notice from this, something that we spoke about in the previous lesson, is that say, your third finger's down, your first and second are behind it on their own fret to help that third finger get that strength and they're also lying in wait in case we need them for another section of the song that already prepared. That's how this song starts. First and second finger down, and most important one is that third finger on the fifth fret. We do a quick little rundown. [MUSIC] We play the fifth with the third finger, the second and third finger come out. Our first finger is already waiting on the third fret A, and then we apply open so we get. [MUSIC] Just try that as a little exercise for me. [MUSIC] Five, three, open. Now after this, it's got a pulsating feel. There's a little start, stop with the open notes. [MUSIC] How you get that boom, boom, boom is to let your fingers just gently come on to the strings, not to press down and catch a fret to make a sound. We are literally cutting the sound away. [MUSIC] After each of those open notes, which is 1, 2, 3, I just let my fingers come down to cut the note short. We get that boom, boom, boom. Really helps with the drive of the track. [MUSIC] The notes would be right if we took that away but it wouldn't have the same feel. [MUSIC] Notice how much that little stop changes the riff. [MUSIC] Love that. Cool. We've done that little rundown and then 1, 1, 2, 3. Then there's a little pause and three open notes happen close together. [MUSIC] You're going to have to be really on it if you're picking on here. [MUSIC] 1, 2,3. Altogether nice and slow. Rundown, 2, 3, pause. [MUSIC] The last little bit is tough. You really want to get that little 1, 2, 3; 1, 2, 3. After the three slow open notes, you've got three quick ones; 1, 2, 3 [MUSIC] 1, 2, 3. Cool? [MUSIC] 1, 2, 3; 1, 2, 3. Then we bring back our first finger; three, open, five, three, open, five, so all together. [MUSIC] One, 2, 3; 1, 2, 3, 3, open, 5. [MUSIC] A little bit faster. [MUSIC] That fifth fret, that last note, same thing. We want to cut the note short. We don't want to let it hang out for ages. We do that by just relaxing our third finger, the first and second can come up as well so we're not pressing down on the strings at the fret sounds anymore. We're just resting our fingers on the string so that it cuts the note a bit. [MUSIC] Thumb's still at the neck at the back, wrist nice and loose and hanging low to allow us to stretch. [MUSIC] After it's played that version twice, it cuts out the little [MUSIC] rundown at the beginning, and it just starts with those slow open notes, 1, 2, 3; [MUSIC] 1, 2, 3; 1,2,3,3, open, 5. [MUSIC] If you're struggling with that first bit, [MUSIC] that stretch, it's a little bit hard at the moment, just start with some of the open notes. Because it does happen quick there. It's a tricky thing. But once you do get it, you'll be flying and it'll open doors for loads of other stuff. Take your time with these lessons, get that exercise we just worked on in place, then start to work through this song. Get confident with it. Be calm when you're playing. Don't try to rush things. Make sure all those notes are coming through nice and clearly. There's no point fumbling through this and getting all these rattling bad buzzing notes. You want everything to be nice and smooth. It doesn't matter how slow you start, play that as slow as you possibly can. Get all those notes nice and clear, and that's going to set you up perfectly as you move further through your bass playing journey. 11. Scales: [MUSIC] We're now going to start looking at scales. These are basically a selection of notes that follow each other, one after the other, either ascending or descending. It's certain combinations of these notes that create keys of music. When we're then in these keys of music, we can take particular notes in that scale or in that key, and we can start to construct codes. For example, if we was playing the G Major scale, we could take the first, the third, and the fifth note of that scale, and we would make a G Major chord. We're not going to jump too much into theory in this class, we just want to start to understand why and where these nodes appear. A great place to start, I think, is to actually learn your fretboard, and we can do this by using what's known as the chromatic scale, also sometimes referred to as the mother scale. This is basically every note that exists on the fretboard, and it's every notes that we use in Western music. Some other areas of the world and within their traditional music, they tune in smaller increments, so they will have more notes to choose from. Over here in Western music, we use 12 notes. It's from these 12 notes that all keys in the music that we use are formed. We just take certain selections, combine them together, and then we're in a particular key of music. Let's use our chromatic scale to learn our fretboard. It's a great thing to do. You want to be aware of where you are on the fretboard at all times. It's so handy to know what note you're playing. Not just for when you're up jamming with other people, which is a brilliant thing to have, but just for your own development and your own awareness. A good thing to point out here is that we're going to have sharps and flats in-between the notes that we play. If I am ascending, it would go from A to A-sharp, for example, if I was coming back down, it would go from B to B-flat. The A-sharp and the B-flat will be the same note. Also from B to C and from E to F, there are no sharps or flats. Don't worry about why at the moment, it's just good to know that point. This will make a bit more sense as we go on. It will become a little bit clearer, the more I play it and talk about it. Let's just start from the left to right. We play our open A string, [MUSIC] we get our first note out, A note. We then get [MUSIC] A-sharp. We then get [MUSIC] B. We got one more frame. We jump straight from B to [MUSIC] C. One more and we get [MUSIC] C-sharp, then [MUSIC] D, then [MUSIC] D-sharp, then [MUSIC] E. Then this is the next place where there's no sharps or flats. We jump straight from E to F [MUSIC], then F-sharp [MUSIC], then G [MUSIC], then G-sharp [MUSIC]. Then when we're on 12th fret [MUSIC], we are playing A again. That means we've traveled one octave. We've gone from one range, starting on A, we've gone up every note, the 12 notes that exist, and we've got to A again [MUSIC] on the 12th fret. We've traveled one octave. This [MUSIC] A is an octave higher than [MUSIC] that A. That's the same for every string there. This is a good way to learn your fretboard. Already, we've cut down how many frets we need to learn because we know [MUSIC] the open A is also A [MUSIC] on the 12th fret. [MUSIC] Open A, play down the 12th fret, that's A as well. [MUSIC] Open D, play down the [MUSIC] 12th fret, that's D as well. [MUSIC] Open G, play down on the [MUSIC] 12th fret, that's G as well. We've got [MUSIC] two notes rather than just the open strings. [MUSIC] It's then learning those notes to exist in-between from the open to the 12th. We use that chromatic scale that we just went through. If I started on A, I could've started on D. If I did start on D, we'd get back to that chromatic scale we just use. We'd count up in the same way. [MUSIC] D, D-sharp, E, jump straight from E to F, [MUSIC] F-sharp, G, G-sharp, A, A-sharp, B, straight from B to C, C-sharp, we're back to D. Now if you want, pause this and try that on the G and E, remembering to use that chromatic scale wherever you start in that scale, you just keep moving up one at a time. While you're doing that exercise, [MUSIC] I just demonstrated there is 1, 2. I was using my first and second finger. [MUSIC] Which you can do. You could do it all with your first finger. If you wish, alternate in [MUSIC] picking the hand though, alternate in those fingers. Then you could try 1, 2 [MUSIC] that little slide, keep that smoothness, make every note nice and clear. Then you could turn that into the 1, 2, 3 that we tried earlier. [MUSIC] 1, 2, 3, we're back on 12. We've started the next octave. Then try that with the four finger; [MUSIC] E, F, F-sharp, G, G-sharp. That little thing is the highest one up at the moment, but your first finger slides up, replaces it as the highest finger up the fretboard. We're now playing the fifth fret, which is [MUSIC] A, A-sharp, B, C, slide again, [MUSIC] C-sharp, D, D-sharp, we're back to A. Great way of learning your fretboard. Now another level trick is, if I'm playing the first fret of the E string, and I go down two strings A, D, and I go up two frets [MUSIC] and then the third fret of the D string. That first fret of the E, and the third fret of the D, it's the same note. [MUSIC] Remember a chromatic scale, open E, F, so that F there, another F appears down here. That's the same [MUSIC] all the way up the fretboard. Suddenly, if you've learned the first fret of the E string, you've also learned the first fret of the D string. We're cutting down the amount of work that we do. We're starting to make this fretboard look a lot less daunting. Same principle applies on the string underneath. First fret of the A string, go down two strings, D, G, go up two frets. Third fret, first fret of the A, third fret of the G, then same note. If I use my chromatic scale, [MUSIC] open A, one fret was A-Sharp, first fret of the A string, third fret of the G string, they're same note. They're both [MUSIC] A-sharp, B, C, C-sharp, D, all the way up the fretboard. It's really handy to know where all these versions of the same note exist. Because if you're playing a song and it's hard as you're playing along to just play an F and G, you might not just want to play. [MUSIC] You know that you've got an F there. [MUSIC] If you use your chromatic scale, [MUSIC] there's an F there and the G. There's also an F there and the G. That exist all the way up and down the fretboard. It's really important that you start to get aware of where they are. It will open up your playing massively. In the next lesson, we're going to look at some combinations of those notes to start forming particular case of music. 12. Keys Of Music: [MUSIC] Now that we've covered every note that exist on the fretboard, it's time to construct keys of music. Now we're going to start with the C major scale. To create a major scale, we're taking seven notes from that chromatic scale. Depending on where we start from and what notes we include, whether they're sharpened or flattened, that will dictate what key we are in. The great thing about starting with the C major is that there are no sharps or flats that exist within that key, which tends to make things a little bit easier to digest for beginners. Now so far we've been counting up by using our frets and following our musical alphabet. Something you start to see when you research music theory in more detail are these order of notes referred to as tones and semitones. For major scale, and we're referring to C at the moment, we would go C, D, E, F, G, A, B and then we're back to C. They can also be referred to as tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone. That's basically the distance each note is traveling as we work up the scale. To quickly demonstrate that, the scale and the position we're going to be working on starts here. With our note C, [MUSIC] we're playing open D as a shift of a tone. We then play an E note, that's a shift of another tone. We then go to F, which is a semitone. We then go to G, which is another tone, I which is another tone, B shifts up another tone, and C. You notice the ones that shifted the whole tone they move technically two frets. When they move a semitone, it just moves one fret. Tone, tone, tone, there's two fret jumps, and semitone. Anyway, that's a brief bit of music theory again that we're throwing into this course, but I don't want to overload you with that. I want to inspire you to just get up and running with your creativity and the songs and the exercises. Then that music theory has been teased there if you want to research a little bit further. I'm not too far away, I'm going to be doing a music theory class at some point so keep your eyes open for that. Let's build this scale together now. There are lots of different ways that you can play this up and down the fretboard. But I've chosen two positions that are really going to work on stretching our fingers, continuing with that work we've been doing so well so far. We're going to start by using our second finger on the third fret of the A string. Get that tucked up, nice and close to the third fret for me with your second finger [MUSIC] and we play it out. That's our C note. We then go to our open D. We've gone C on the A string, open D, alternating those fingers. We then go second fret of the D string. We've played C, D, and E. Third fret, open, second fret. We then add the third fret of that D string. Altogether we've gone C, D, E, F. We then bring in another open string which is at G underneath. From the F note we go to our open G. Altogether C, D, E, F, G. Pause this if you need to anytime. C, D, E, F, G. When we're playing that open G, have your first finger ready to come down onto to second fret of the G. We've now got our A note, C, D, E, F, G, A, we're on that second fret of the G string. That is a big stretch here, you want to open up those fingers, keep that wrist nice and low and loose like we did in our exercises, and you bring your third finger across to the full fret of the G. We have our B note. We've gone from the open G, second fret, full fret, keeping that middle finger down as well for a bit more stability. Then lastly, our little finger stretches to that C note. We've gone up an octave, we're at the next C. We're at the end or the next starting point of that scale. We've gone C, D, E, F, G, A, big stretch, B, C. Now we can reverse that. Once you've got that and you're comfortable, reverse it, C, B, A, open G, third fret the D, fret F, E, open D, C. [MUSIC] Excellent. Really good. To carry on with that C major scale, I wanted to teach you one more position, which is really good for stretching and then there's a great chromatic trick that you can do with it. We start in the same position, third fret of the A string, second finger. This time we played a D note by stretching our little finger to the fifth fret. We've gone third fret, fifth fret. Keeping this nice four fret and four fingers stretch going on at all times. A second finger comes down to that D string second fret. A second finger, then plays the third fret, and our little finger again stretches to the fifth fret. So far we've got third fret, fifth fret, second fret of the D, third fret of the D. It stretch to the fifth fret, keeping these fingers down for the stability. Then we go to our second fret again, full fret, fifth fret. Similar to the one we've just done, we've cut out the open strings, we're making our fingers work a little bit harder, especially our little finger. Now the great thing about that position, once you've played it starting on the third fret, you're playing C major, you can just move it up one. Keeping the same distance between the fingers, the same distance of frets you think back to your chromatic scale after C, with C#. Because we've moved from C, we've moved up one fret to C#, we're now playing the C# major scale. If I move that again, C# goes to D, we're playing the D major scale. D# major, and one more E [MUSIC]. You are now able to play the major scale up and down the fret board for every key. I started on C, I moved up to C#, D, D#, E, and and so on. I can go all the way until I run out frets. The same as I could have moved back one. If I'm in C major there, I move back one, I'm in B major. Great little trick there. Great way to unlock and understand your fretboard in a lot more depth. While we're on scales I want to introduce one that's a little bit more tricky and you can play in two octaves. Remember we spoke about octaves earlier. Once you've got your starting point, a C for example, you've got C, D, E, F, G, A, B. You're back to C, you're on the next octave, you could just carry that on C, D, E, F, G, A, B. You've played that key, that major scale in its next octave. I want to do that with the E major scale. I'm going to run through this reasonably quickly, I'm going to put in the tabs so that you can refer to it as well. But it's a great way again of strengthening and stretching those fingers. We start with our open E. We want to have our first finger ready to come onto the second fret of the E. We are now playing the note F#. We've moved up one tone. We stretch our third finger across to the full fret and then our little finger to the fifth. Big old stretch going on here. But we've done some exercises earlier on, they're going to help with this. Open 2, 4, 5, then we do two underneath, second fret. Then we slide up to the full fret. We are now playing C#, we bring our third finger down to the sixth fret, and then our little finger down to the seventh fret. We've gone E, F#, G#, A, B, slide, C#, D#, E. This is where we carry on the octave because we're back to E now. We've got our E note there with our little finger. We don't find an F# down here on the full fret of the D, then another G# on the sixth fret. Then the seventh fret we've got an A. Again, starting from the E with our little finger, E, F#, G#, A. We now need to find a B, which is just down here. Full fret at the G, we slide again until we get to C#, D#, E. Again, start from that second octave, little finger on the seventh fret of the A. Seventh fret of the A, full fret of the D, sixth fret of the D, seventh fret of the D. Full fret of the G, slide to the sixth fret of the G, eighth fret of the G, ninth fret of the G. You see it's a great one to get your hand moving up and down the fretboard and crossing over all four strings. I'd really recommend getting that one now down. It's a great one for improving your technique. I'm going to run through ascending and descending once more nice and slowly and then you'll have that PDF document with a tab that will help you out. Open E to start. [MUSIC] Excellent. I hope you've managed to digest that well. Let's crack on with playing another riff. 13. The Clash - Should I Stay Or Should I Go: [MUSIC] Guys, it's time to get another little riff in our logcat. This is a great tune by the band The Clash and it's called Should I Stay or Should I Go. It follows what we've been doing really well because we just worked on that scale shape where we were stretching their fingers out. This riff has got a similar shape at the beginning of it. It's a really cool baseline, I think that drives this tune, especially because its song has got halftime verse, and then it kicks up into this straight-up beat in the choruses and the bass plays such a big part in carrying both sections. I'm going to be using the guitar I picked for this song for what would be a good track to give an example of how it sounds and how it differs from all the finger work we've been doing before this. Like we said earlier, rock, alternative music, the style of this song I picked to cut through works really well. Let's jump straight into it. I'm going to give a quick example of how that riff goes. [MUSIC] Of course, you can see there's a couple of different sections there, and hopefully, you've picked up there that stretch that goes from the little finger up to the second, down to the first, and then that full fret stretch. Very similar to the same major scale shape we did before. Like I mentioned earlier, if you're using your pick, you can hang your wrist loose over the top, coming over the body like so, or you can press down on the bridge wherever feels more comfortable. If you're resting on that bridge, make sure your hand is not too far across [MUSIC] because you dump that sound, which is cool, but it's not what we're after the moment, bring it back into a bit and you get that nice open sound. Let's get started. Our little finger is on the fifth fret of the ice stream, and we get two pulsing stub hits of that note. [MUSIC] We want to pulse it by relaxing the little finger after each hit, so the note stunted and it doesn't ring out. [MUSIC] One, two, nice easy stuff. [MUSIC] I really] want to get this nice stretch in place because we're going to need our second finger in a second and we're going to need to have first. Let's get them ready in a way in over those frets. [MUSIC] We go up to the third fret of the E string off to that fifth fret. We played two notes up there, but this time, they are a lot closer together. [MUSIC] 1,2, 3, 4, [MUSIC] and then we go to the A string and we go second, third, and fifth, so that's utilizing that scale shape we worked on a little while ago. [MUSIC] Then we cut that last note, that fifth fret up to the third [MUSIC] and then second, third, and fifth from the O. [MUSIC] Cut the note dead. [MUSIC] You might be tempted when you listen to the track to come in straight away [MUSIC] because that's what a guitar does. It's hinting for that first note, that fifth fret of the I to go [MUSIC] hit it a few times. But actually, we want to relax and just pulse that. [MUSIC] Once we've done that four times from the beginning of the song, we go up to the third fret of the E string, we do a similar start with our third finger, [MUSIC] those pulsing into hits, [MUSIC] and then we go to the first fret. I'm going to have our first finger waiting. [MUSIC] We do two notes closer together this time. Two that didn't and then we open up, [MUSIC] after we've done that too, we go 1, 2, 3. Now there's a little bit of debate here. Some people when you see them play will just stay on that first fret. [MUSIC] They won't bring in the second fret. You don't have to do it that way. I'll put both versions in the tabs. It's up to you. I think you can do both and then it's nice to have both versions covered. At third fret without pulsating start [MUSIC] and first fret, [MUSIC] 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, or [MUSIC] 1, 1, 1, 1, 3. Once we've played that, it goes back to that first bit [MUSIC] and then we introduce a slightly new bit where we slide up to the fifth. You can just go straight to the fifth fret of the A if you wish. [MUSIC] We can hit eight times 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Or if you want to be fancy using a technique we're going to work on in a minute and a bit more drizzle, you can slide up. [MUSIC] You notice that I'm just doing down streams on that last section [MUSIC] and now I bang on a lot about alternating your fingers or the down upstreams. [MUSIC] But it's obviously time in a track from that extra drive, that extra push that you're going to get from downstream works, and that's exactly what's going on there. Let's go from the top. [MUSIC] Remember that H stretch, there's two pulses and when to stop. [MUSIC] After we've done that four times, we go up to the third fret of the A. [MUSIC] Now to our fifth fret. [MUSIC] Go to that fifth fret of the A. [MUSIC] Then we resolve on our first beat of the riff. [MUSIC] That's great. Really nice riff to master and work so well with all that stretching that we're working on throughout this class. I hope that by these lessons, by presenting you with different riffs and techniques, I can get you up and running, and then it's up to you to push on from then. We're done. Let's crack on the next lesson. 14. Developing Technique: [MUSIC] We're going to work on some techniques that are really going to expand your playing ability. Hang in there with days, they're not the easiest things to pick up straight away. Like anything, practice, perseverance and it will click, I promise you. We're going to look at hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides in this lesson. I'm not going to do them in the first position, up at the first fret, because you probably know is your frets get a little bit closer together as you work up the fretboard. I felt like these techniques are a little bit easier to do when you haven't got stretch quite as far. You might, on your bass, notice that the strings are a lot higher as you work up the fretboard. That's known as the actions. Sometimes certain guitar strings are a little bit further away from the fretboard than you want them to be. You can take them to a guitar shop and ask for the action to be adjusted, which means that the strings will be brought a little bit closer to the fretboard, meaning you won't have to push down as hard, because they won't be as far away. If your guitar does have that and the strings are too far away, feel free to move this to an area of the fret board that's comfortable for you. Basically, we just need to use four frets. As long as you're covering four frets with these techniques that we're working on, that's great. I'm going to start up on the seventh fret, and I'm going to play on the E string first. The first thing we're going to look at are hammer-ons. Tuck your finger for me if your guitar is comfortable in that area up to the seventh fret of the E string. We're just going to play that. We want our second finger waiting over the eighth frame. Once I've played that seventh fret once, I hammer down my second finger. See why it's called hammer-ons. I don't need to pluck this string again. [MUSIC] My second thing is doing all the work. It should be in a nice smooth transition between those two nodes. This is what we're looking for. You can play with the dynamic [MUSIC] of how hard that second finger comes down. We want something nice in the middle, nice and smooth. Once you've hammered that second finger down, nice and close to the fret, keep that second finger down and hammer the third down. See how it frees up our hand? Suddenly our left hand, our fretting hand, is doing more work than our right. Our left hand is dictating how things are going to sound, when the next node is going to come, what rhythm, and what time am I creating in. [MUSIC] Once that third finger is down, use your little finger. I can say this might have feel very hard to do to begin with. You're going to need to build the strength in those fingers. But it's all right, that will come. [MUSIC] We've got to begin 1st on to 2nd, which is seventh onto eighth frame. Then eighth to ninth, and then ninth to 10th. Once you've done that, see if you can do all four. [MUSIC] All you're doing there is just plucking the first string, and the next three fingers play the rest of that rhythm for you. [MUSIC] Great exercise to build strength in those nice hands. As always, once you've done that one string, try on the next. [MUSIC] Excellent. Then a way of reversing this is using the technique pull-off. Let's start with that string we finished on, we're on the eighth string, the eighth fret of the I. Once first fingers is down, let's hammer that second finger down. If I wanted to reverse it, I'm literally doing what the technique says. I'm pulling that finger off, but I'm not just going up, because you won't really get much pull and you won't get much of a note from that string. I'm pulling down. I'm keeping my first finger anchored where it is, but my second finger holds down and off of the string. I'm still just hitting it once with my right hand. My second finger comes down to make a nice clear sound. We're pulling off the string, not just up, down, across with a tip of our finger to create a different sound using the different technique. It's great. We can do the same with my third, onto a second. The second fingers is down there. [MUSIC] The third finger just pulls of for that string. The first and second finger down to keep that continuity, that stability, and the third finger goes off of that ninth fret. Hardest one is the little finger, but work on that. See if you can get your little finger, put it across that string on the tenth fret, and your third finger is laying in white on the ninth. Once that technique is complete, pluck it once with your right hand, hold down with your little finger, and our third finger is there waiting for that note to sound. There's some great variations you can do with these exercises to take your technique even further. Don't just stick to what I'm instructing you, be creative, see if you can think of your own ways to develop this practice and this technique. We can just get them from the seventh to the 10th, even one at a time or all together. Why not, once you've played that one and two, move down to the next string, and the next one, and back up. Maybe once you've played that first and second finger on the seventh and eighth, you can move to the next string and play the ninth and tenth. Then you can play the 11th and 12th. Then the 10th and 14th. Great way to get used to moving and bouncing up and down your fretboard. [MUSIC] Experiment with letting those notes hang or stopping them. [MUSIC] So many variations of what you can do and the same with the pull-offs. Just have a really good play around and see what you can come up with. One more, we're going to look at slides, which are another really cool thing to incorporate into your plane. Let's start from the third fret of the I string. Once I've plucked that note once, I can just slide to the fifth fret. I don't have to play that fifth fret when I get there, because I've kept my finger down enough, so when it travels across those strings, we haven't lost the note. There's that little bit of limbo, from the fourth to the fifth. I'm reapplying all the pressure, once I get to the fifth. I'm moving so quick between that third to fifth, and the fourth, is just like a passing note. You can relax very slightly as you do that [MUSIC] to allow yourself to move. If you're too stiff, it's going to be hard to push your finger across, obviously. But we are going to allow our finger to glide over to that fifth fret. We never want to lose the note. We don't just have to go to the fifth fret, we can go as high as we want. See how far you can take that? Start in different strings and start at different frets. Create your own starting points. You can usually slide backwards. If we've gone from the third to the fifth, from the D string, go from the fifth back to the third. I only need to pluck it once. All of these techniques together are beautiful. [MUSIC] You can start to see how you're making a lot more fluid by just playing. [MUSIC] Cool. Have a good play around with that. Like I said, there's some guidelines, some basic principles to get you up and running. Then it's down to you to see how far you can take it. 15. Songs - The Beatles & Lou Reed: [MUSIC] Now we've had a look at those techniques, let's learn a couple of little riffs where you can implement those skills. The first we're going to do is Come Together by The Beatles. Another iconic baseline played in a really cool way, I love it, that slide, that movement, that fluency is wicked. Let's see if we can get up and running with it. We're going to start with our first finger on the fifth fret of the A. I'm going to quickly just demonstrate how this sounds. [MUSIC] Sounds pretty tricky. But the more you practice this, I really think you'll be able to get that fluidity that comes with that slide. The first thing we need to do is put our first finger behind the fifth fret of the A string. [MUSIC] We pluck that twice in that pulsating way that we've worked on before. [MUSIC] Then the third time we hit that we're sliding all the way up to the 12th fret but we want our third finger to play that 12th fret. [MUSIC] See how I'm doing that. Soon as I've hit that third note, [MUSIC] I went to my first finger is to the 10th fret of the A. Then I hammer the third finger down to the 12th fret of the A. That note is a passing note it happens very briefly before the real standard out note comes on that 10th fret of the G. [MUSIC] It's playing pretty quickly that transition, but it's that link that makes it so smooth. [MUSIC] Struggled to get the feel through if it's too slow. We want to really get to that [MUSIC] soon as we can. [MUSIC] Now you will see some people play this slightly differently. They might use their third finger [MUSIC] and slide from around the eighth fret to help bring that brief little A note that 12th fret of the A string out. [MUSIC] That's easier for you, you can do that. [MUSIC] Or you can do that tiny little hammer on like this [MUSIC] or with the third finger [MUSIC]. Minimum difference. [MUSIC] Once we've played that 10th fret of the G, however we're getting there, we play the 12th fret of the D and we slide back. [MUSIC] The riff starts with a slide up, ends with a slide down, which is quite handy for us to get back to our starting note that fifth fret the D. [MUSIC] Alternated those two versions there. Another way you see people do it, is you can start with your second finger on the 10th fret of the E. Play those first couple of notes. Then when we need to do what was the slide, we can stop on our 10th fret of the A string and bring our third finger down on the 12th fret of the A string. You get [MUSIC] It's a much more condensed way of doing it. It removes the slide at the beginning it removes that slide at the end. It's not quite the feel of the track the right vibe, but it is a great way to get up and running with that riff if you wanted to tackle it in that way, [MUSIC] you could still put that slide in, just makes it harder to get back to your starting note. [MUSIC] If you are sliding back, just don't go too far. Don't go as far as you would have to on that first version, we learned where you're starting up on this fifth fret the A [MUSIC] a little hammer-on. Really great little riff to have going on [MUSIC] persevere with that one I know it's tricky. But once you've got those slides that link everything is going to make you feel really confident about where you're going with your baseline. Another one we can quickly look at, is walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed, also sampled by A Tribe Called Quest the hip-hop group so used in two very different styles of music, but used really well in both in my opinion, so it's a nice one for our slide. We start on the eight fret of the E string. [MUSIC] We slide back to the first fret. [MUSIC] We go from the first back to the eighth. [MUSIC] Now when you listen to this track, [MUSIC] you'll notice that there's not just that low baseline going on. [MUSIC] Unfortunately, for us because that would be, nice and easy to get up and running with. [MUSIC] Get yourself comfortable with that first because that's a nice, easy access to the track. Underneath that, is a higher version with slightly different arrangement of notes. [MUSIC] When they play together, they sound really cool. We can't do exactly what the two different parts are playing, even though they played together on the record, obviously, it's overdubbed. We can't do that, but there is a version that we're going to work on in a second. Once we've got our eighth to first, [MUSIC] nice easy one to get us up and running. Then practice your ninth. We are going to play that once more. Slide up to the 14th. Around the G. Then we bring out a little finger across to the 15th, 16th, 17th fret. [MUSIC] We go ninth. Up to the 14th. Little finger to the 17th, slides back till we get to around the 12th fret, and then our first finger plays the ninth again. [MUSIC] See how we're doing that there. My little finger remains across the strings, so it gets to around the 12th,13th fret. Then our first finger can start the riff again with that ninth fret of the G. [MUSIC] Nice smooth slide up and then down. [MUSIC] When you listen to the record you hear all those two go over the top of each other. Now just quickly. Quite a complicated thing to do, but there is a little bit of a change that we can do that sounds similar to the record, not exactly what a two different parts of playing, but we can adjust that lower version that we did, and incorporate the higher version so we get a similar vibe to what's being created on the song. This is where we're going to need to do a pinching technique. We're using our thumb [MUSIC] and our first finger. [MUSIC] We're following the order of what our higher version of the riff did. We're sliding from this eighth fret and ninth fret eighth of the E ninth of the G up to the 14th of the G, like we did in that higher version. But this time our lowest string is being played on the 13th fret with our first finger, [MUSIC] alternating that first second finger when we're pinching firm and first finger at the same time. [MUSIC] Then firm and second finger at the same time. Then a little finger slides to that 17th fret that we used earlier on. [MUSIC] Slides back from the 17th. [MUSIC] We still pinch that low string as well. [MUSIC] But our low string E, stays on the 13th fret. [MUSIC] Cool. That's as close as I think you're going to get to making it sound like the record. What a cool thing to have? You've got two parts combined into one, and you can pretty much replicate it with that technique. We've introduced pinching now, we're using our firm first or second finger to pinch two notes at the same time, we're starting to form cords effectively. That's going to work well for a little technique we're going to work on in another lesson. [MUSIC] Remember to keep that low string down when you slide back. [MUSIC] Cool, another couple of riffs covered, stick the records on, reference them, get used to how they feel. Pick up on all those little nuances and see how much of that you can implement into your plan. As always, take your time, don't rush enough practice and you will definitely get there. 16. Octaves: We're now going to look at something else that you'll hear and see a lot up here here bass guitar playing. It's called playing octaves. Now we spoke a bit about octaves earlier on, so that was for example, if we started with our open A and we worked all the way up to the 12th fret we would find another A note that's higher, it's higher octave. Those same notes appear all the way up and down the fretboard. Sometimes you might want to play them together or one after the other to get more of that pulsating feel, the feel we spoke about earlier. When you're starting and stopping something, you can do a similar thing with octaves. You'll hear this kind of style appear a lot in dance music or funk. I just wanted to show you how to do with them just so it's another little thing you can implement into your playing. Let's start with the third fret of the A string, we put our first finger there using that chromatic scale, A, A sharp, A, C, we notice a C note. We are then going to go to frets down and to frets across. Remember we looked at this shape earlier when we were thinking about learning our fretboard, we know that that's the C note. If we go two strings down and two frets across, that's a C note as well. It might be when you're applying certain styles, learning certain songs or writing your own music, you might not want to stay on just that route C, you might want to bring in the octave to add a bit of variety to what you're playing. It's nothing too dissimilar from what we worked on earlier with our fingers. Our first finger would pluck A string, it can rest on the A above if you wish, and then our second finger, so we're doing the alternate into of the fingers would play the J and it can rest on the D above it. We can then move that shape up and down. I'm letting the notes hanging out there. If I want to give it a bit more of a pump. We just did what we spoke about in previous lessons, we relax the finger that's on the fret just so it makes the note dead. Really cool. You can do that on the low string as well. Wherever you're starting, say you're on the third fret, we go two strings down and two frets across, we have the octave. If I'm on the 10th fret, I go two strings down, two frets across I'm using my little finger. I'm playing the octave that knocks a D, two strings down, two frets across, that knocks a D as well. If you wanted those octaves to have a bit more punchy, you wanted to cut through a bit more, that's when we can bring the peak back into play. Really cool thing. You can get some great sounds and some great vibes going on. Experiment with both and see how you go on. 17. Timing: [MUSIC] A really important factor when it comes to developing musicianship is understanding timing. We're going to look at exercise now that's really going to help push that forward. We're going to put it in the help of a metronome for this. If you're not too sure what that is, it's basically a device that keeps constant time. If we wanted the beat to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, that steady rhythm, that tempo that we said is going to happen at exactly the same pace every time, and the pace that that's working at is called beats per minute or BPM. You will hear people refer to the tempo of a track being 90 bpm or 90 beats per minute. For this exercise, I'm going to set a metronome that I've got on my phone. It's an app called Metro Timer. Definitely worth checking out. There's a free version. It's really handy and really useful for where we're at in our beginner, bass player journey. Check out Metro Timer or wherever metronome you can get your hands on, and I'm going to set it to 70 bpm. What I'm going to do is I'm going to play on the first beat that we hear. I'm going to play, and I'm going to let that count out for a beat of four. Once that four has happened, my bar is going to start again, and that's what you are hearing when you listen to pieces of music. There's certain amounts of bars that are fitted into, or how long a riff would last. A riff might last for four bars. A set of codes might move around for four or eight bars before they loop. Again, music is basically constructed of all these little segments, all these tiny bars that last for 4, 8, 12, 16 beats that are pieced together to create the overall composition that you're listening to. We want to break that down. Take a tiny section, listening to those four beats that occur, 1, 2, 3, 4, we start again. If you want to follow along this exercise with me, place your first finger on the fifth fret of the E string. No particular reason that we're choosing that fret, we're just going to use that for this exercise. After four beats have been heard, my third finger, it's going to play the seventh note of the E string. They are the notes, A and B on the fifth and the seventh fret of the E string. Let me just quickly demonstrate how that works, 1, 2, 3, 4. [MUSIC] Now you see by having that metronome there, I've got a place where I need to be at a set time. I can't be late. I can't be a little bit early. That beat is going to remain constant. I know once I've played that fifth fret, I've only got a few more base before I need to get to the seventh, and I have to be bang on that, and if you want to make nice syncopated, punchy music, like dance music, you'll hear that those beats happen really tightly. They are bang on the money every time. When you got to watch a band live, a drama might actually be used in a metronome to make sure everyone else in that band and that song is being played at exactly the tempo that they want. Not all bands do that. You will find people with drift in and out and they won't use a metronome live. A lot of times when you see a band, the live version of the song will be faster than the record. That probably indicates they're not using the metronome, or they decided to speed it up. But generally, if you want that nice, constant, consistent, syncopated time, things like metronomes are really useful for that. To build the foundations of our bass guitar playing, when we're first learning, we want to make sure that when we go from one note to the next, we're getting there when we're meant to get there. This time I'm going to play that note. I'm going to let it ring for four. I'm going to go to the next note, and then I'm going to start to fill in the gaps. I'm going to play on beat one and three. The first time I play it once and let it ring for four beats, and then I will play on the one and the three. Three, four. One, two, three, four, same again. Now we're going to fill the gap on the three. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Excellent. I'm going to keep that running. Now, we're going to play on every beat, 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 3, 4,1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. You see how you can start to push the exercise. You're slowly filling in the gaps, making yourself work a little bit harder. Now timing can be broken down into even smaller increments. It's not like you have to exist just on my metronome beats. There's beats that exist in-between that. You can break that down as much as you want depending upon how fast you can play. Let's see now if we can play in-between that four count. Instead of just 1, 2, 3, 4, there's gonna be 1, 2, 3, 4 and we're going to play on the and. Let me demonstrate 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. You don't have to do this all with me right now. It's just giving you example of how you can start simple by playing on that one. Implant the one on the three, then the 1, 2, 3, 4 then the ands that exist in between, and you would just gradually feel it and get more and more competent at playing in all those small increments they exist in-between. Let's do one more. Sometimes you'll hear people rather than just one ands, they'll go one er and er, two er and er three er and er, so we've sliced those beats even more. We've made more of them exist in-between that one and two, and 2-3 and 3-4, we've now fit it in a one er and er two er and er, three er and er, four er and er. Now it sounds I'm just talking nonsense er and er, but it will hopefully make sense in a second, 1, 2, 3, 4, and on that first beat, [MUSIC]. [MUSIC] Hopefully, time it makes a little bit more sense now, or at the very least, I've given you a good format to work from, to build and develop your time in practice. Like I said, it's really important. It's the foundations of everything. If you understand timing, if you're aware of your own timing, that'll make you a more all-around musician. 18. Writing Your Own Music: I'm going to talk a little bit now about writing your own music. I think it's really important as a musician that quite early on you realize that you've got your own unique creative voice. It's brilliant to listen to other people's music. Obviously, we gain so much satisfaction and enjoyment from that. But I think songwriting a lot of time can come across as this unattainable thing that only certain people can do. I firmly believe that everyone has the ability to do that. Once you start to deconstruct music, you realize how accessible and how achievable this is. I want to give you a quick exercise to take away so that while you're developing and learning other people's songs and working on the exercises we've gone through, you'll also be dedicating a bit of time to thinking right, what could I do? What could I create that's mine that's unique to me? In a simple way of doing this is by taking the C-major scale, for example, that we worked on earlier. We've got seven notes in there C, D, E, F, G, I, and B. Just pick a random order of those notes, just select four. I'm going to choose the notes I, C, E, and D, for no other reason. Then I just think that's good combination to just throw out there and see what they sound like. I'm going to start just by plucking each note once. [BACKGROUND] Leave quite a gap. Counting four in-between 1,2,3,4, might bringing them a little bit quicker, closer together. Start to fill in the gaps every now and again. Hang again. Just by doing that, just by picking four notes in any order out of that C-major scale, you're making your own music. That's a rift that I'm just writing in there. I'm just jamming, I'm just creating, I'm just seeing what comes. I'm feeling that moment, filling in the gaps. Not all of this can work. Some of it might not sound great together but that's where music is subjective, isn't it? Some of you think it sounds great, someone else isn't going to be so okay with them and that's the beauty of it. There's no right or wrong when you're starting to do this process. Couple of those little steps and just hang again. Remember we had those octaves earlier. A student every time, maybe the slides. See what happens if you just pick four notes, start simply in any order up and down the fret-board. If you want to make it a bit more complicated, a little bit more to think about you could add the sharp. I've just gone for an easier, more accessible format there. We haven't got to think too much about the sharps and flats, but I could've done [BACKGROUND] a nice sharp and then a C and then a D sharp and then an F maybe. What does it sound like if I went from A sharp C, D sharp, E. Doesn't feel like a nice place to end. I can maybe bring in the F. Feels like it needs one more at the end. Just experiment. Like I say, you can't do anything wrong here. Also, if you're looking for inspiration when you're trying to write your own material, rather than just playing in the air on your own with whatever combination of notes, load up some drum loops. If you've got any software on your computer like Garage-band or Logic that have a load of pre-made loops on there, which if you just press play on that, get that rhythm going, I guarantee you will start to form some grooves on your base that will work well with wherever you're hearing back. Sometimes even just put in a metronome on. You've got that consistently going on alongside you, something that helps you land at the right time will help you and inspire you to find a combination of notes. Another option is to take risks that you've learned from some of your favorite musicians, some of your favorite bands, and just play around with the order of notes that they use. I mean, why not? It's only 12 notes in Western music. People unintentionally copy each other all the time. Why not be inspired by the people who have made you want to play the guitar and just reverse their reefs or muddle up the order of the notes and see what comes from it. You'll be surprised at how much variety could exist within quite a limited amount of notes. Hopefully, just that briefly, little chart and an example of that gives you a bit of inspiration to go away, learn other people's songs, then there's exercises, but see what creative potential you have as well. If you're feeling confident enough, please upload and share it in the projects and resources section so we can all celebrate what you're achieving and just generally learn and be inspired by each other. 19. Ben E. King - Stand By Me: We're going to work on one more song in this class. It's an absolute classic, its by Ben E. King and it's called Stand By Me. I'm just going to have a quick play through that riff and then we'll break it down. [MUSIC] You can see there's a nice little stretch that is going on there. Some slight variations to how you can play this riff. You've probably seen some slightly different versions going around depending on the bass player, depending on how they approach it. I think for this lesson, the range, the area, the guitar and the way that we have to stretch, utilize our little finger felt like this was a nice way to approach it, and it sounds really nice along to the original recording. Let's break that down. We're going to start with our middle finger on the 7th fret of the D string. [MUSIC] We're playing that twice. [MUSIC] The first note is cut short. [MUSIC] Then I let the 2nd one ring out. That theme happens throughout this riff. [MUSIC] Just get that first. [MUSIC] Get a nice feel for where we're going. [MUSIC] After that, we go to the string above, but we're on the same fret. [MUSIC] We play it once. [MUSIC] Remember to alternate your first and second finger or the down up strums if you're using the pick. [MUSIC] We've gone above to the A string. [MUSIC] We then go to the 6th fret of the D, and then back to the 7th fret of the D. Altogether, we get [MUSIC] We start that riff again. [MUSIC] When we're back at the 7th on the D, we play it twice like we do at the beginning. That's your first section, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2. [MUSIC] Think of that as a section that's finished now. To start the next one, it starts on that 7th fret again, but it runs down on the D. Here we go. We've gone 7, 6, 2 hits on the A string 9th fret, 7, 6 on the D, two times on the 9th fret of the A. Let's try it altogether quickly. [MUSIC] There's that run-down. [MUSIC] Really nice. Make that smooth as you can, that transition. [MUSIC] Really stretch that little finger over to the 9th fret of the A. As always, tucked nicely behind that fret. Nice and confident, using the strings behind to help this press down. [MUSIC] We now utilize our second finger to play the 7th fret of the A string after we've gone [MUSIC] It goes 7th fret of the A, back to two hits on the 9th fret of the A. From the top. [MUSIC] Brilliant. Think of that as its own little section. [MUSIC] Cause now we do a rundown of 9, 7, 5 [MUSIC] Brilliant. It's a little bit tricky there. But all that stretching that you've been doing throughout this class I'm sure is going to help you there. Once we're at that 5th fret, we go [MUSIC] Slightly change up the order 5, 9, 7. Let me go from the top before we get too carried away. [MUSIC] Now we do the rundown. [MUSIC] Two hits on the 5, and then one more on the 5th fret. [MUSIC] 5, 9, 7. [MUSIC] We're so close to resolving the riff now. Once more from the top. [MUSIC] Start that rundown, 9, 7, 5, 5, 9, 7. [MUSIC] Then to resolve, we go 7 on the A string, 6, 7 on the D string. We're back to the beginning. [MUSIC] Let's try that once more from the top and try and get to the end. Nice and slow. [MUSIC] Run down [MUSIC] back up, [MUSIC] back to the beginning. [MUSIC] Let me start again. [MUSIC] This time when I play that through, listen at how often that thing I spoke about at the beginning happens where the first note [MUSIC] will be dead and the second note will ring out longer. [MUSIC] It happens all over that riff. [MUSIC] See how that second one hangs out. It happens here. [MUSIC] Hangs out. [MUSIC] Hangs out. [MUSIC] Excellent, that's such a cool riff, I think to have and hopefully it's a combination of a lot of the techniques we've been learning throughout the class. You're stretching a lot there, you're doing those little stops and you're moving across a couple of strings and really working on how far your little finger has to go and how strong it has to be [MUSIC]. Stick on the original and see if you can play along too. 20. Final Thoughts: That brings us to the end of the class. Thank you so much for working through every lesson. I hope you found it enjoyable and rewarding. It really does mean a lot when a student takes one of my classes, so thank you so much for being a part of that. A few pointers to remember, as a bit of a recap. Make sure you're sitting upright and you're nice and loose. You're not too tense when you're playing. You don't want to be caught in any of those aches and pains. They're a real nightmare further down the line, if you don't nip that in the bud nice and early on. Try and learn both the fingerstyle and the pick when you're playing your bass. I know we've focused on fingers here, and I think finger's the primary one for you to engage with, but it's always good to have that pick ability in your locker as well. Like we discussed, different styles of music that's going to be really well suited to it. Start slow with your practice. Don't rush ahead. Don't worry if there's something you can't quite get. Maybe someone else is learning alongside you, and they've got there before you. It really doesn't matter. Everyone learns at their own pace. They'll be certain things that you pick up quicker than other people and vice versa, so just take your time with everything. Start slow and build upon that, and make your practice fun, exciting and engaging. Give yourself a structure that works for you. I recommend that you start off with those warm up exercises. You stretch your fingers, you get them strong like we spoke about earlier on. You might then mixing the scales and you look at some of the songs that you really enjoy playing along to. There's extra songs in the PDFs, so please delve into those as well. There's quite a few that we've worked on throughout this class, but I've stuck even more in there for you to push yourself a little bit further. On the note of tabs, check out the website, ultimate guitar or their app because they have got a ton of material on there that people have tagged. I'm pretty sure you'll be able to find tabs to all, if not most of your favorite songs. Like I've stressed, believe in your own creative ability. Take all of the previous points we've covered in learning outcomes, and start to see how you can apply them in your own way to write your own music. Hopefully, I've demonstrated the seed of how accessible writing your own music is. You definitely have the ability to do this, so believe in yourself and have a go. Please get involved in the class project if you'd like to. It'd be great to see how your learning journey is going, and most importantly, I just love hearing what students are doing. I'm more than happy to give constructive feedback if you'd like to. But really the aim is just to get you focusing even more on what you're creating. Be more aware of where your playing's at. Filming yourself is a great way of doing that. There's nothing quite like hearing and seeing yourself back when you're learning something. If you feel comfortable to, upload that into the project and resources section, and we can all share, learn, and be inspired by each other. You can embed a YouTube link or you could do something like SoundCloud, and post that link in there as well. If you're uploading and sharing anything that you've been creating along to this class on something like Instagram, then please get involved by using the hashtags, "Skillshare" or "GuitarwithMarc" because then that will be picked up by the Skillshare team and myself, and I can see what you're all up to, and what you're sharing with the world. My e-mail address and Instagram is also coming up on the screen. You can drop me a line whenever you want. You can either post questions in the discussions box on Skillshare, or you can contact me on those other details, and I will definitely get back to you. I keep an eye on Skillshare every day, and I reply to every comment and question that comes in, so please feel free to get in touch. Also, reviews are a huge way of helping this class get out to more students, and I really just like hearing what you think. I want to learn from you as well. If there's suggestions of what you think I should include in future classes, if there's things you would've liked changed in this, if there's something you want me to focus on more, then please let me know. The more of those reviews that come in, the more the words spread, the more people we can work with, and the more we can all create this beautiful little musical community. Previously, students have gotten in touch, and asked me to cover particular songs in these classes, so if you've got any requests like that, definitely get in touch and I will always see what I can do. Remember you can check out those other guitar classes that I have in Skillshare if you want to, and the recording one that I mentioned, and if you've got friends, family that are learning or that play guitar, then why not combine these classes, combine the songs that are covered in both, and see if you can start to make some music together. There's also plenty more classes coming your way, so keep an eye on the emails I send out. Hit me up with any questions, keep playing, keep creative and I hope to see you again soon. All the best.