Learn To Play Bass Guitar

An important thing when you learn to play bass guitar is to develop your left hand technique, the fretting hand, so to speak. It does make sense – you need to have strength and coordination in your fingers. After all it’s a fretted instrument and you need to press the strings in order to make note changes.

However, I think many players spend way too much time developing flashy meaningless left hand acrobatics. Back in the late 70s (if you can stomach a digression) Rumanian female gymnasts became ever younger. In the end it was mere kids performing acrobatics at the Olympics. All elements of performing art and dance were gone. It was circus.

I think there is a fine line between acrobatics and art in music as well. I admit that there are divine players around (the Pastorius’, the Clarks’, and so on). I too find it impressive to listen to Donna Lee (though my favourite Jaco track is Come On, Come Over – pure R’n’B), but I enjoy a lot more listening to a cool reggae bass line, a good song, a good melody, than instrumental fusion jazz. That’s me. Now you know. You might think I missed the point. I think that’s ok.

Back to what I wanted to say: As you learn to play bass guitar you have to develop some technique. I don’t like the terminology, though, as I am much more in favour of simply playing. So that’s what I will call it, playing.

So you want to be good to play. Forget about meaningless scales and stuff like that. A lot of teachers will have you practising boring scales up and down, up and down, and then ask you to be creative with them. I think that is rubbish. You need to play songs. You need to learn simple chord progressions to popular songs and simply play those chord progressions over and over and over again.

One of the most recognisable chord progressions is the blues. You can find elements of this progression in all Western popular music. It’s the music of the simple uneducated country folks. Be you from Ireland, the USA, Scandinavia or wherever, this is us regular Joe’s and Jane’s type of stuff, before the elitist musicians made it complex beyond recognition.

When I practise technique (again, I really dislike the terminology) I play the blues chord progression. I would take my metronome, have it click at 60 beats per minute and simulate the 2 and 4 of the beat (effectively playing at 120 beats per minute), just as if it was the snare drum, and I would start playing something along the style of this BB King song.

It would just be the metronome, my bass and me. I change keys and tempo as I like, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, but always in the groove.

This is how you learn to play bass guitar. I encourage you to go on in the same fashion. Look for chord progressions in your style of music, your interests, and just jam along and really get the chord progression into your head, try to copy the bass line, start with something simple, play as much as possible and your technique will develop by itself, guaranteed.

And before I forget – the bass player on the track is Jerry Jemmot. If you’re into anything soul or R’n’B related I encourage you to check him out.

Here’s some stuff that might be interesting:

AOL Playboy and Tommy Christopher Drama – Did I hit all the key buzzwords in the title? I think so… Anyway, I’ve been enjoying a self-imposed blog break to move on to other more important things in life, like sell the house, learn to play Bass guitar among other things. …

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