Learn to play Bass: Beginner Masterclass (With Workbook!)

1. Welcome!: Hi, My name is Jacob Lam. I'm a musician, a music teacher, and the author of the basic music series of books. Thank you so much for looking at my introduction masterclass for playing the bass. This is going to be a well-rounded course, focusing on the notes on the strings of the bass. Playing over a chord progression. Different styles of base, making your own riffs and playing with a band. We'll practice with a couple of different songs for you to play over and always give you the sheets and tracks that you need to practice along. This is where a beginner who's never touched a base. But in the end, you're going to have a thorough understanding of the basics of base and be able to sit down and play through your favorite songs. So we'll start together in the next class. 2. Parts of the Bass: To start, let's talk about the parts of your base. Now, this is broken into three main sections, and they're actually a lot like the human body. At the top of the base we have the head. The long part that the head attaches to will be the neck of your base and the head and the neck attached to the body of your base. Now, of course, there are parts on your base that are not like the human body. On the head of your base, you have tuners that adjust how tightly each string is being pulled. We use these tuners to move each string until it's the correct pitch. The tighter the string, the higher the pitch of your base. On the body of your base, you have pickups. These listened to your strings and send the signal out of an amplifier or headphones. We also may have 12 or even three knobs and a switcher. The nobs control the volume and the tone of your base, how open or closed it sounds. The switcher changes which pickup is listening to your base. Pickups further down might sound more tinny or thin. Pickups further back towards the neck might sound more full or fat. Pickups listening in different places here, different things. Finally, and most importantly, we have the strings of your base which connect to the bridge at the bottom and the horizontal metal bars going across the neck. These are threats. Threats are what we press down on to change the pitch of our base. The higher up we press a fret, the higher the tone will be on the string we're headed. For example, if we hit an open string, just a plain string without pressing anything down, that will be a lower tone or a lower pitch than if we press a fret down on that string and then played or picked the string. So the way that we played bass is that we just memorize the note or pitch on these different frets. And then songs will tell us which one they want us to use. 3. Left and Right Hand Technique: Now we want to make sure before we play that we're playing correctly. And so we're going to look quickly at left and right-hand technique that will make the base as fun and comfortable as possible. We're going to start with the left hand or the hand that presses down the frets. There are a couple rules to remember to make sure the base is coming through clearly. First of all, we want to keep our arm as relaxed as possible with our left hand instead of turning our hand one way or the other, we're going to try our best to keep our fingers perpendicular with the frets. Now, some turning will happen naturally as we get further away from our body, but as straight as we can keep them is best. My thumb is going to be along the back of the neck. At the mid point. We want to make sure the thumbs on the back of the neck and not over the top. One of the reasons being is that we're also trying to keep a gap between our poem and the neck. So instead of twisting thumb over and Poem on the neck, we're going to have thymine back perpendicular and leave some dead space between our hands. You may have to bend your wrist a little bit. Now when we actually play a fret, there's two things we want to do. The first and most important is to make sure that we're playing in the bottom half of the space. So for example, if I want the third fret, I'm going to count 123 metal bars and then play in the brown space between the bars. But I'll be playing in the lower half of that brown space. If I play too far back, you're going to get this buzzy sound. This buzzy sound clears up the further down you go until you land on top, and then it sounds muted. The second thing we want to be sure of with our left hand when we're playing the frets, is that our fingers stay close to the strings even when we're not using them. This was my problem. When I started learning an instrument, my teacher told me that my fingers were too far out when I wasn't using them. As best as you can keep your fingers that you're not using. Nice and low, hovering just above the strings so they won't interrupt the notes being played. But they also won't be too far out when we need them, causing hand fatigue. Next, let's take a look at our picking hand. I'm going to take my right thumb and place it onto one of the pickups base so it rests right there. This is going to give us a good anchor so our fingers can better find the strings. It's a lot more difficult to find the strings you want if your hand is flying free. So we'll put our thumb on the pickup. And now I'm going to actually pick the string with my first, second finger, alternating between the two. This is called for good reason, alternate picking. So I'm going to take my first finger. I'm going to put it on a string. And I'm going to play that string and let my finger fall into my thumb. And I'll do the same with my second finger. If I play the next string down, then I'm going to let my finger fall into the string before it ends up touching it. As I go further down the base, I'm going to have my thumb follow behind and end up moving it. As I move strengths. This way I can comfortably reach all of the strings. One thing that's very important to mention is that we are picking down and back with our fingers. We're not pulling up. Maybe I'll get the base flat here. We're not pulling up or back. We're pulling down, down and back. 4. Tuning Your Bass: We need to know how to tune our instrument using the tuners on the head. Now, sometimes if we're playing and it doesn't sound quite right, it might not be our fault. We can double-check the notes and if it still sounds off, we might just need to tune our instrument. Strings change, especially as seasons and weather changes, the wood can bend. Let's learn how to tune our instrument. Each string is connected to its own tuner on top of the base. Now we can turn these tuners to tighten or loosen the string, which makes the pitch higher or lower. We can use a few different types of tuners to help us. Some tuners go right on the head of your guitar and clip and listen using vibrations. Some tuners, if you have cables and petals, some tuners could be built into a petal or even have a dedicated pedal for tuning your instrument. Now probably the easiest and most accessible tuner is through an app. On your phone, tablet, or computer. You can search in the App Store or the Play Store for a guitar tuner. I have one here up on the screen and when I open it, it takes me to a guitar. Maybe I don't want that. Maybe I want to change it to a base. Now I have the names of the bass strings up on the app. And when I play a string, it will automatically recognize it and give me a dial that will be to the left. If my note is too low, telling me to raise it up to the middle line or to the right. If my note is too high, telling me to lower it to the middle line. Let's try our first string. Well that one's pretty good. I see a green check mark in the middle and so we can move on to our next string. Now my a string is far too low. What I'm gonna do is I'm going to find the tuner connected to the a string. And I'm going to turn it very slowly. And I'm going to hit the string every few seconds. I don't want to turn it quickly while my string isn't making any sound. Because then the string could snap. Or I can pass how far up or down I need to tune it. So I'm going to move slowly and I'm going to hit consistently. Sounds like that string is good to go. Now I'll move on to my second string. That one is too high, so same thing. I'll just turn the tuner the other way. And finally my last string. When I finished tuning, I can check each string one more time just to make sure. Good thing I did. Now my instruments in tune and I'm ready to move forward in play. 5. Half Steps and Whole Steps: We're just about ready to play our base in the very next video. But first, we need to understand something called half-steps. And whole-steps. We're going to be referencing just about everything in terms of half-steps and whole-steps. Now, a half-step is the very smallest amount that you can move up or down the base. So in this case it would be just from one fret to the next. For example, maybe I'm playing the second fret. I want to move up by a half-step. Well, the smallest amount that I can move it up to the third fret. If I want to move back down by a half step, I would move just one fret down. This also works if we're on the open string, not pressing anything down. So maybe I'll play the open first string. Now if I want to move up by a half-step, I would just go up to the first fret. The smallest amount I could move. A whole step you might have guessed, is two half-steps put together. So now we'd be moving by two frets at a time. Again, if I was playing the second fret, and I want it to move up by a whole step. Well, I'd move up 12 frets and back down a whole step. This also works for the open strings. I could play an open first string. And now to move up by a whole step, I would move up two frets. 6. Warmups: It's time to start actually playing our base. And we're going to start really simply with an exercise or a warm-up. Now, we can do this from any fret on the neck. For the purposes of this video, we'll start on the third fret of the thickest string, the fourth string. So I will count up one fret, two frets, three frets, and I will start right there. Now, the way that this works is I'm going to assign one finger per fret, four fingers, four frets. We're spanning four frets. I'm going to play the first finger on the third fret. The next finger on the next thread up. Next finger on the next, for it out. By now we're at number five. And the pinky on fret number six. Now, the pinky may feel weak. It's kind of an odd finger to use for something like this. But the more that we played base, the stronger it will get and the more natural and comfortable it will become. Now that we've worked up 1234, we're going to do that Every single string. So moving to the third string, 1234 and the second string 1234. And finally the first string, 1234. You get comfortable with that and you practice it from a few different starting points on the neck, then you could work on coming back down when you've reached the top. A very important thing to pay attention to as you're running through this, is that you're not just using your first or second finger, but that you're alternating between the fingers. Just like using the pinky. This is something that becomes more comfortable the more that we do it. One of the really fun things about doing it is that it gives us this double speed. So each finger is hitting half as fast as we're hearing a note, right? Every fingers hitting every other nodes. And this allows us to speed up and play things that sound very fast. Even though our fingers aren't working too hard by themselves. 7. Fourth String Notes: With an understanding of the parts of our bass technique and how whole and half steps work, it's time to actually start learning the notes on the base so that we can play songs. Now, the way we're going to do this is using sheet music and tabs. Sheet music is just putting dots on different lines and spaces and each dot matches a note. We will take these one at a time as we go through notes on them base, and you'll memorize them as you use them. The tabs end up being a huge help as we're learning. They show you the four strings of the base, the fourth, third, second, first string. And we put numbers on these strings, which just tell us which for it to play. So for example, the third fret on the fourth string would be here on the sheet music. And we'd show third fret on the fourth string just by putting the number three for three on the fourth string line. So as we move notes on the base, they go up the sheet music. The notes also move up the tabs, jumping from string to string. On our fourth string, we're going to look at three notes. These notes are E, F, and G. E is going to be the name of the open string. No frets press down open fourth string. F is going to be on the first fret, just a half step above E. And G will be a whole step above F. So now we're on the third fret, the sixth string. While you try to keep your fingers nice and close to the neck, I'm going to get mine a little bit out of the way sometimes so that you can see where they're playing. So we have E, F, and G. What we're going to do is we're going to practice a song using E, F, and G for you to get the most out of this course, I recommend that you practice the song using the notes, using the sheet music and using the tabs so that you can get comfortable with all three. Here's the song. Another great way to practice is to make your own song using E, F, and G will run through the four strings. And we'll start combining the strings in one song. 8. Third String Notes: We're coming up to the notes on our third string. Now, a reminder for motivation. The more notes we know, the more songs we can play. Seat when we look up a song, it just tells us what notes to play over which word. Now, of course, there's a lot more to base than this and we're going to go over a lot of it. But for now, just to get started with playing, we're going to keep grinding through these strings. And by the end of the fourth strings, if we know these notes, we should be able to play a lot of songs that are out there already. So notes on the third string. On the fourth string, we looked at E, F, and G. Now we're going to be looking at a, B, and C. I know it's strange we didn't start with an a. That's just the way the pitches workout on the guitar and how we've organized the strings. For the third string, we're doing a, B, and C. So a is going to be the open third string. Nothing pressed down. B is going to be a whole step above a. So now we're jumping onto the second fret of that third string. And C is going to be a half step above B, right on that third fret. That means the notes we have so far are being seen. Now. We've got a song, just like we did with the fourth string that focuses on a, B, and C. Then we've got a song that uses both the fourth and the third string. So here's our third string song. Take that song in the notes, and let's take a look at a song that blends the fourth and the third string. And remember, we're going to follow along with our fingers changing back and forth from string to string. It's new to us, but we'll get it the more that we practice. 9. Second String Notes: It's time to look at the notes now on the second string, we've got E, F, and G on the fourth string, a, b, and c on the third string. Now on the second string, we've got D, E, and F. Now let's hold up for a second. We've already got an e and an F. So why are there two on our base? Well, there's a low example of notes, and there's a higher example of notes. This is called an octave. We can play a low E. We could jump up an octave to the higher E. But how do we know which one to play in a song? Well, there are a few ways. If we're using tabs, it will tell us exactly which for it to hit on which string, whether it's a higher octave note or a lower octave, know if we're using sheet music. Then it will also tell us if the note should be higher or lower based on where the dot is. When we look up a song though, and it just tells us the notes to hit. It doesn't really specify if it should be a higher or lower octave. This is one of the reasons it's so important to understand and use tabs or sheet music. Or be really good with our ears to be able to hear what the base is doing in a song and to copy it. Sometimes in a song, someone's jumping back and forth between octaves. Or sometimes they're sticking to one octave keeping it either low or high. But let's look at our notes. On the D string. We have open second string, which is D. Now, a whole step above D on the second fret is going to be an E. You can hear that our high and our low E seemed to have something in common. That's that octave right there. Low E and high E, F and F. So now we've got our song for the second string and a song that blends the second string with third string. Let's start with the song on the second string. And then our song that uses the second, third string. 10. First String Notes: Finally, we're looking at our first string notes. Now we've got E, F, and G on the fourth string, a, b, and c on the third string, D, E, and F on the second string. Now we're on our first string, we're doing G a and leaving it right there, G and a only two notes to look at here. So our open first string is G. And then a is going to be a whole step above. So we'll put our middle finger on the second fret, raising to an a. So again, let's take a song. This time we'll do two songs that blend the first string and the second string. Here's our first song. And then our second song. Again, all of the songs should be in your notes so you can go play along with the sheet music and the tabs. And remember as well to write your own, to really get comfortable with these notes. You may notice in that song that I threw a little bit of the third string in there. Now, don't be too intimidated. We can always slow it down. Take the notes as slow as we need, but you've got the tabs and the sheet music so you can work through at your own pace. But now we're blending a lot of the strings together and doing some real songs. 11. Finding Notes on the Fretboard: Now we've kept to the lower portion of the base so far. So how do we kind of work our way up the base? Well, there's actually a really simple rule to help us get pretty fluid around the neck of the base. And it's this. Every single note is a whole step away from one another, except two. Now, let's start with that first bit. Every single note is a whole step away from each other. That means if I know where a is and I want to find a B, I just have to move up by two frets. And we see that happen from the a string to the B. That's a whole step up. Same thing if I know where a C note is. And I want to find a D. Well, now we know that that's a whole step up. So I have a couple of options. I could play a D as my second string, right? We know that that's a D. Or since now I know it's a whole step up. I could move from that C up two frets to indeed same note as the open second string. I want to find an e, sure, that's up by another wholesale. And so knowing that rule, knowing that every note is a whole step away, except two, can really help us find our way around the neck. But we need to know what those two exceptions are so that we know how to play those. B to C and E to F, our half-steps. So every note is a whole step away except B to C and E to F. So we can take a string, any string and practice working our way up. Maybe I'll do it with the low E. So I've got my nice and low. Now if I'm looking for an F, that's one of those exceptions. So E to F is just a half-step away. F to G. Whole step. G to a whole step. So another two frets. A to B, another two. Now we're looking at B to C. That's one of the exceptions. So I'll take my B, I'll move it up by half-step. C to D. D to E, right back where we started at an an octave above. With that rule, we can work our way up and down the neck and find any note we want. Again, counting at first might be slow. We have to memorize rule, we have to get used to using it. But eventually, we start really seeing those notes all around the frets just as a second language as you get used to it. Now when you look up how to play songs and they gave you the notes to use, you don't have to stay really low down on the neck. You can kinda jump around and find shapes and methods of playing around these chords are notes that are really comfortable for you. 12. Rhythms: Being able to find the notes on our base is great. But now we want to add some rhythm into their ad, kind of a beat to it. Instead of just holding a note after we play it, we're going to learn kind of a classic base pattern. And there are two variations to it. First though, we want to be able to know how to count for the base. We're going to break this into four sections, or four beats, 1234. In-between those beats. We're going to count using the word. And this will help us sub-divide or not, always play on a numbered hit. So now we would count 123412. For our first classic base pattern. We want to hit one, the end of two, the three, and the end of four. Now I know this seems strange, but it'll make sense once we do it. We're playing 1234123. I'm going to go between a G note and a D notes. And I'm going to keep that pattern, 12341234. And you'll hear what we'll speed it up a bit. Now we're adding in kind of a rhythm of beat two are playing. The second pattern is even easier than the first. Now we're playing 123 and then just holding it. So 123, 31234. So now when we follow along notes in a song, we don't have to just hold it, but we can add that rhythm in there. Let me play through a few notes. First, just holding out the note and then doing it with this rhythmic patterns. So you can hear the change. Playing with this rhythmic pattern playing with some, some beats in there is a lot more interesting and will capture your audience's attention. 13. Song Practice #1: It's time to practice what we know so far with a progression. We're just going to lay out a set of notes for you. You can play these by yourself at your own pace. And when you get comfortable with them, we're going to put a track in this video for you to play along to. It will also be in the notes of this class. We're going to play G, D, E minor, and C. So that's a G note, D and E. And a sea. Start by playing through these, just holding the note. Then bring in those classic base patterns that we just talked about. Play it by yourself and then see if you can play it with the track we have as well. 14. Roots and Fifths: It's time to learn about using roots and fifths. Now, everything we've been playing so far would be considered a root, a root note. When you play a G, well the root is a G. When you play a C, the root is a C. But there's also a fifth to every note. Now, what this means is we're counting up five notes from G, a, B, C, and D. D would be the fifth of g. If we're counting from C, it would be C, D, E, F, and G, G would be the fifth of C. So all we're doing is taking our root node and counting up five. Now, why are we doing that? Why are we finding the fifth? Well, we can take our classic base pattern that we just learned in the previous lesson. Now, we can play that pattern shared between the root note and the fifth. For example, let me play what it sounds like and then show you an easy way to find the fifth on the neck of your base. Instead of counting every time. The pattern, the rhythm is exactly the same as what we played in the previous lesson. We're just splitting that pattern between the root note and the fifth of that fruit. This adds a lot of life to a baseline. Now, here's an easy way to find that fifth. Whatever your root is, we'll say it's a G. Well, your fifth will always be on the next string and two frets higher. So if my root note is on the third fret of the fourth string, I'm going to move up a string and up two frets to the fifth fret of the third string. There's my fin. And again, if I move to the D note, while my fifth will be on the next tray, and two frets higher. I can take this pattern and move it up for the E and again for the C. So we can start blending things that we've learned. Now we know how to find notes. We know the classic base pattern, and we know the fifth. When we blend those together, we can start putting together a really cool baseline underneath the other band members. 15. Sharps and Flats: We're missing something and you may have noticed it. You'll remember that every single note is a whole step away, except for B2C and E to F. But that means that for most of the notes, we're skipping over a threat. In fact, when we learned our notes on each of the four strings down at the top here, we had skipped a lot of friends. So what are those that we're skipping over? Here? We're coming up to something called a sharp and a flat. C sharp and flat, or the notes that fit in-between the whole letters. For example, between a and B, you would have an a sharp, or between C and D, you would have a C sharp. So when we're counting, we could count a, a sharp, B, C, C-sharp, D-sharp, E, and so on. So the sharp is when we take a letter and we raise it by a half step before we hit the next letter. So what about a flat? Well, a flat is the same thing coming from the other direction. So between D and C, If we're moving downwards, we have a D flat. And so you may be thinking, I thought that was a C-sharp. Well, some of these threats actually share the name of this note. C-sharp is the same note as a D flat. But we call it either sharp or flat, depending on which direction we're coming from. If we're playing a D note and we want to move it down by a half-step. Well, that would be a D flat, not a C-sharp. Technically, the same note, but just different names depending on which direction you are coming from. What this means is that we're now able to play any fret in front of us on the whole base. When you see a sharp note or chord when you're looking up a song, it will look like this hashtag or pound sign symbol. A flat sign kind of looks like a squished up B. If you're ever playing a song and you come to an a with this squished up B. Well, you can think of that as an a note. Moved down by a half-step. Not quite all the way to g. Or if you see a C with the pound sign next to it, you can think of a C note moved up by a half-step. Now, we can practice another chord progression utilizing sharps and flats. 16. Thirds (Major and Minor): We've learned about fifths on the base. Now, what if we added in thirds? Thirds are just like fifths only we count to three instead of five. The biggest difference when we play thirds is that there is a major and a minor third. Now, that's a new term to us. Major in the music world is typically a happier sound. This would be a major third. Minor typically has a sadder sound to it. This would be a minor third. Now, along with fifths, we can bring thirds into our playing, and that gives us three notes to play around with the classic base rhythms or any rhythms that you come up with or learn. Here's the easy way to find a third, both major and minor. From our root node will use C as our example. If we want a major third, well, just like the fifth, it's on the next string. The difference is it's on the next string and OneNote down. So if I'm on the third fret of the third stray, my third will be on the second fret of the second string. Now, I can make this little weird triangle shape with my root third. And Finn. My minor third is very similar. It's just a half step down from the major third. So it would be on the next string and two frets. So you have this bigger triangle going on, or at least a symmetrical one. Now, how do we know whether to use a major third or a minor third? Well, it depends on the chord that you're playing over. Typically when you look up a song, it will tell you if you need to be playing a major chord or a minor chord. Chords are assumed to be major. But if they have a little M next to them, that little M stands for minor. So for example, if I had a chord progression that was D, E, M or E minor, and then C. Here's what I would play. I play my D major third, and Finn. I'd go up to E and I play my my minor third, and then I come down to C. And since there's no little m, again, I'm going to play that major kind of triangle shape with my scene, major third, fifth. So altogether over D minor. And see, I have three notes for each chord that I can kind of play around with. And here's something that I would do. Now we can use roots, thirds major or minor, and fifths, to play over notes and changing chords. 17. Song Practice #2: We have another practice session and so another track that you can play over. This time, it'll be either major or minor chords. And we may even have some sharps in there, will be playing a, E, D, and C-sharp minor. Now, that sounds a little crazy. So let's go through each of those and just see how we put that together. A is easy. We know we're in a node is and its major, so we can play our root third, fifth. And we find that route by counting half step to F, whole step, whole step to add. Next was an e. And so in the same way we can count up to E, which would either be our open, thickest fourth string, the second fret of the second string. And we can play that major shape right there. Then we had a D, which I would count a half step to C and go to D. We had the crazy one, the C-sharp minor. So we'll take it one step at a time. We go a, B, C. And now we make it sharp, which meant up by a half-step. And then from there, from that as your root note, we play that minor shape. So we have a D, C-sharp Minor. Back to a practice over that chord progression. Again, playing with thirds and fifths. Do it at your own pace and then try it with the backing track. 18. Final Project: At the end of this class, we're going to have an understanding of notes on the base. How to find notes all over the fretboard, and how to play different shapes rhythmically over chord changes. Now that's a lot to cover. But by the end, if you follow the practice material, you should be able to do the final project, which is to make your own chord progression or pick one out of a song that you really enjoy and then play over it using the techniques that we talked about. Now, you can submit that either as a video or an audio recording. Or if you don't have the ability to do that, then you can submit just text of the chords that you chose and the notes or rhythm that you would play over it. I'm excited to see your projects. 19. Congratulations!: Well done, You've made it to the end of the class. Hopefully you found it helpful and there was a lot of information that was new to you, and none of it was overwhelming. If you have any questions or comments, you can always reach me at lamb Lessons.com or e-mail me directly at Jacob Atlanta Lessons.com. Thank you so much for watching the course. Always look at some of the other ones we have available, and I'll see you soon.