The notes on your bass

Let’s start by looking at the thickest string on your bass. Even though it’s the highest in terms of it’s physical placement (it’s furthest from the ground and the closest to the sky) it is known as the lowest string. You play the lowest notes on it; it’s the lowest string.

This string is your guy. If you had some kind of freak accident on your way to a gig and all your other strings broke on the way to a gig, you could get by just using this fella.

The most common tuning of the electric bass is like so:

E F F# G G# A A# B C C# D D# E

This is a series of short lessons aimed at beginner bassists who want to be functional in a band as soon as possible. You’ve maybe/possibly already had some jams with friends, been to ultimateguitar.com in search of the tab for one of your favourite songs, and watched a couple of Youtube tutorials.  You want to strike out into the wide world, but are worried that at your first audition the guitarist is going to introduce a song the song you’re going to paly like this:

“Cool, so this next one’s in 7/4.  It’s a groove around the B flat mixolydian with some flattened thirds thrown in there.  Just I, ii, VI, I – pretty simple. Just watch me for the changes.”

What’s he talking about?

Over the course of several posts I hope to introduce most of the concepts you need to be an asset in a practice room. I’ll try to order it logically, so you can go out and use each lesson pretty much straightaway.

Let’s get cracking!