Bass guitar

I just bought my first bass guitar today! I'm just wondering if anybody has or knows of simple tabs to get me started. I also play the cello... if that helps at all. I bought a few beginner books but they can barely hold my interest for more than a few minutes. I just want to start off with something interesting to see if the bass guitar is really for me. I'm still renting at the moment. :roll:

I remember watching G4 once and they talked about how some guy on youtube has videos on how to teach you play. I saw a couple of his videos, and he's really good and I bet you'd learn quickly from his videos. The thing is, I'm not sure if he does bass too. Does anyone know who I'm talking about? I'm trying to remember.

Ah, I think that I remember seeing a bass guitar teacher on Youtube. I think I can manage without the teacher though. All I really want to do is to confirm that I really want to continue bass instead of focusing on something else. Anything challenging would work.

My brother plays electric bass. I'm not sure what he started on(though learning basic chords, scales, 12 bar blues, etc, is always a good idea). Now he bought some books of music by Primus and Les Claypool and plays that a lot. He can read traditional music in addition to tabs, and I think he books are notated such.

Getting lessons is good if you really want to be serious, as having a teacher early helps cut out habits that might be detrimental to your technique.

If you want to play challenging interesting music on you own, I recommend the music of Primus and Les Claypool, Rush(Geddy Lee), Metallica(Cliff Burton, especially "Anesthesia", his signature solo), Yes(Chris Squire). Those guys are some of the best bassists in rock/metal. Ultimately though, you have to just pick the music you like and are interested in, whatever will motivate you to play.

Examples:

Les Claypool - One Better


Anesthesia - Cliff Burton of Metallica


Primus - Wynona's Big Brown Beaver

Haha, thanks WhiteLion. I'll try out some of those songs. It's kind of fascinating how many Fakku members are so cultured. The forums are actually pleasant to be in even though this is a hentai site. :wink: Thanks for your help!

Cliff was definitely a truly great bassist.

I'm not sure what kind of music you're into, but from guitarist to guitarist, I offer a short list of stuff that I hope will help you out.

Muse - Hysteria
- Not too terribly difficult, but sounds impressive and really helps with dexterity. Muse's songs are great for early-medium chops.
Communic - Under A Luminous Sky
- The driving basslines in this song are simply amazing. Erik shows his high caliber musicianship and writing ability throughout the entire album.
In Flames - F(R)IEND
- As In Flames is my absolute favorite band, I'm more than a little biased. Peter is an excellent bassist and his work more than deserves a good study.
Kamelot - The Human Stain
- Simply a great song. The basslines are intense and mesh beautifully. I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds like a fun piece.
Tool - Right In Two
- Tool is great for getting used to weird time signatures and simply badass (yes, it's both relatively simple and badass) fretwork. If you get into percussion, Danny is an excellent subject to study
Lamb of God - Descending
- This is just a beautiful, brutal piece. Somewhat fast.
KoRn - Blind
- Surprisingly simple, surprisingly fun to play along with.

Ultimate Guitar Tabs
-amazing site for tabs, chords, guitarpro tabs, and powertabs; updated daily

Definitely stick with it, dude. When I started out on guitar, I didn't have the benefit of a teacher and I was too retarded to try reading up on it, so I've been slow going. Five years later, I kept chugging along and guitar is one of the things that has kept me sane through high school and my first two years at university. It stays with you, and if you're lucky, it changes you in the best ways.

Well, there's my poorly written, barely edited $0.02 worth. I hope it helps, man. Best of luck to you.

Did you used to hang out on /b/ or something? Most of the people here are nice as long as you don't act like an idiot or spam the forums.

I thought of another good bass piece as well: Black Sabbath's NIB opens with a famous bass solo played by Geezer Butler, another great bassist. Bass also gives some good insight into writing too I think, since even if flashy guitarists and lead singers don't want to admit it, the bass line is the structural foundation of the music, harmonically.

Man, I was watching some of those Les Claypool videos. That guy is insane. Just ridiculous.

Well, if you go to a porn site you wouldn't expect it to have a great community. I guess the people on this site are different.

Those Leslie Edward videos are amazing. Primus is just incredible. He uses so many different types of techniques. On top of being a great bass player he even wrote a novel and directed a movie. He has talent coming out the wazoo.

mtar666 thanks for your 2¢'s. I think I will stick with the bass. You can't really go wrong with learning another instrument. :D

Welcome to Fakku.

Bass guitar - definitely a good pick. But the first obstacle to overcome is something completely different than simply learning... stuff. I don't know how much of this you've gone through with your cello training, but it will definitely hurt. Be prepared for painful cuts on your fingers and I hope you don't mind not being able to move your arms for a day or two. That's something you have to go through, and it's a good sign if it's painful, because this way your body is learning and building up the necessary muscles for this instrument.

Got any plans on which picking technique you'll be trying to develop yet? Most people choose specific techniques due to some great musicians they're looking up to, which is not necessarily a bad thing as long as you're not forcing yourself into that.



I'd personally say the opposite, if you make a bad teacher pick, lessons will probably simply force you into adopting specific techniques and may prevent you from developing your own unique playing. I believe that there are no such things as 'detrimental' habits, there's a reason why your body's doing them. I've seen bass players only picking with two fingers (Many people would call that a handicap.) making me gasp with their insane speed.

I would disagree on two counts. Firstly, there are such things as detrimental bad habits. With any instrument, from a technical standpoint you want to be able to play difficult passages with as little tension and expenditure of physical effort as possible. Certain habits have the opposite effect. For example, lifting one's fingers very far from the strings and fretboard when pulling off would be a habit that would make playing technically difficult passages harder. There is likewise no advantage to this as a "uniqueness" of playing, it simply requires one to expend more effort when switching notes.

Secondly, in order to add a meaningful uniqueness to one's playing, I think it has to be a conscious choice made to create a certain effect in one's playing. Simply playing a certain way because one picked up the bass guitar and without thinking started playing a certain way isn't necessarily going to be a positive thing. It's possible to succeed even with bizarre playing habits, and some great musicians have played in manners that probably didn't help them and should not be emulated, but they managed to succeed anyways(Vladamir Horowitz played piano with no wrist, and Jeffry Khaner plays flute with his neck permanently at a 45 degree angle). Still, these things are more curiosities about their playing rather than uniquenesses that contribute to a style, and copying these techniques is almost never a good idea.

Generally, in order to develop unique or extended techniques to add a distinctive style to one's playing, it is a good idea to first master the basic conventional techniques in order to understand how the instrument works and how technique affects sound. I doubt Les Claypool began his bass playing by experimenting with bizarre distortions and new techniques while neglecting basic techniques, scales, etc.

Fundamentals matter. A good teacher will make sure a student learns the fundamentals, but once they do, the teacher will allow the student to make informed choices about how the student plays, even if the teacher wouldn't necessarily play that way.

I'm not particularly worried about the cuts and the pain. I've been through that several times from cello. I don't think that I'll choose a specific picking technique. Recently, I've been using only my index finger to pick because that would be how I pizzicato on my cello. Meh... I know it's wrong but it feels a lot more natural. I'm probably going to find a teacher if I stick to the bass. My cello teacher can refer me to a bass teacher as well and my cello teacher really wants his students to develop their own style. It'll work out.

Oh geez, I wrote such a big wall of text in response to that, WhiteLion, until I realized that this thread is about someone starting to learn bass and it would be bad manners to completely derail it with talk about things TrIx79 won't even bother with until several years of playing bass would have been reached. So I'll be a nice nacho this time - at least I was able to satisfy my hunger for writing.

But taking lessons is definitely a good thing, at least until you're able to figure things regarding bass playing out yourself. Keep us informed on how you're doing with your bass.

I have played it for a lot of years and I must say that a very simple way to learn both playing, hearing, rythm and keeping time is to play with tabs or notes to tracks. Plus its cheap.

Do not redo my mistake of neglecting the basics!
Its very frustrating to be able to play fast as hell but not be able to play a pentascale from top of fretboard and down.

And if you play in a band, do not let youreself be pushed into a background role ('pumping one friggin note'). All great bands of musical magnitude have had basists with some serious balls (The Who annyone^^)