A bassline works like a special ingredient of a recipe to cook an excellent meal. Though bass guitars are not the centre point of a band, yet it plays a vital role to keep all the instruments together. Many songs became popular and soldout for having a good bassline. Many songs could not make their place for having an average bassline.
Learning bass guitar is not very challenging; it requires the same effort and practice as any other instrument, and gradually a beginner becomes better but with proper, regular, and effective practice. If you are wondering how to play the bass guitar, then you will not have to wait for long because in this article we are about to guide you to get into your learning process.
How to play the bass guitar
The best way to learn an instrument is to follow an instructor. But this does not mean that learning how to play the bass guitar is not possible by yourself. You can follow the guide and carry on with the proper exercise and do the exercise accurately for the productive progression of your learning process. In this way, you can develop gradually, and eventually, you will be a beginner bass guitar practitioner.
We are going to guide you step by step for you to learn how to play the bass guitar. So let’s see what the steps are
1. Know your instrument
When you are about to learn an instrument, it is essential to know about your instrument, the component of it, what are the types and other equipment and requirements. Know about your instrument will also help you to buy it. Ones you know your instrument, you will be able to judge what is right and bad and figure out what is comfortable, long-lasting, and finally buy the best bass guitar for a beginner.
Types of bass guitar
There are three types of bass guitars: Upright bass, Acoustic bass, and electric bass guitar. The most preferable best bass guitar for a beginner is an electric bass guitar.
Why electric bass guitar for a beginner?
An electric bass guitar is the standard type of bass guitar for the required bassline in most of the popular musical genre. From pop to rock or even jazz or R&B or hip-hop, the electric bass guitar is the standard bass guitar for the bass line. And also, if you can play electric bass guitar, then you will be able to play acoustic bass guitar because the playing style of both is the same.
The upright bass guitar is best for western classical music, and sometimes they are played in jazz and rarely in other music. Learning upright bass can challenging because it is fretless and played differently. In that case, learning an electric guitar can be helpful if you want to learn the upright bass guitar because an electric guitar is simple. You will get an idea about music theory from the learning process of an electric bass guitar.
Tuning and strings
There are four-string bass guitar, five-string bass guitar, and some have 6 or 7 strings as well. Four-string bass guitars are standard, and most played. Hence four-string bass guitar is the best bass guitar for beginners.
The tunning of a bass guitar is the same as the first four-string of a guitar. From the top sting, it is E-A-D-G. If you add more strings, then it will go accordingly to a guitar, for example, if your bass guitar has five-string E-A-D-G-B.
Components of guitar
- Neck: The neck of a bass guitar consists of the fretboard, headstock, and a truss rod inside the neck, connecting the neck with the body.
- Headstock: The wider part at the end of the neck is the headstock where the tuning pegs are fixed.
- The tuning pegs: The tuning pegs are the rotating keys to adjust the string tension that changes the pitch of a string to change the note of string.
- Fretboard: The thin layer of wood on the front side of the neck on which the strings lay is the fretboard. The fretboard is also known as the fingerboard. Rosewood, ebony, or maple are the ideal kind of wood used in the fretboard. And a good fretboard is smooth where you can move your fingers easily.
- Frets: The thin metal strips embedded on the fretboard called frets. The frets determine the notes to play. For example, put your finger on the first fret of the first string on your bass guitar, press it, and pluck the string, you will play the F note.
- Truss rod: Truss rod connects the neck with the body of a bass guitar. The truss rod also keeps the neck straight.
- Pickup: A guitar pickup converts the vibrations of guitar strings into electrical signals.
Notes and transition
If you are playing an electric bass guitar, then your tunning from the top string would E-A-D-G. When you pluck a note without holding a fret, then you will be playing the note after which the string is defined. So if you play the first string without touching the fret, then you will play the E note.
Now, if you press the first fret and pluck, you will play the F note. And the second fret will be F Sharp.
Beginners need to learn all twelve notes there is. If you start from E, then all twelve notes will be
- E,
- F,
- F sharp,
- G,
- G sharp,
- A,
- A sharp or B flat,
- B,
- C,
- C sharp,
- D,
- D sharp or E flat then
- E again
So these are the twelve notes
Scales and note progression
There are many types of scales. A scale is a set of not that is ordered according to the pitch sequentially. For beginners, it is not wise to learn too many scales. A beginner bass guitar learner can start with two modes of scales: A major scale and a minor scale.
To learn about the note progression first, you need to know what is a whole note and a half note
- Half note
A transition of one note to the next note that is in the next fret is a half note. For example, if you play C, then the next the note is C sharp. That means the transition of C to C sharp is a half note in another word a half note progression from C note is C sharp.
- Whole note
The transition from one note and skip a half note and going to the next note is called a Whole note progression. For example, the whole note progression from the C note is D.
Note: We wrote W to indicate a whole note and H to mention a half note.
Start with a Major scale
For the major scale of any key, the progression would be a Whole note-Whole note-Half note-Whole note-Wholenote-Whole note-Half note. That means
C to D (which is a whole note) and from D to E is another whole note then E to F is Half note, now F to G is another whole note G to A is another Whole note and A to B is a whole note as well, and B to C is a half note. So this is a C major scale, in short, we can say it is C-D-E-F-G-A-B if the Key of your scale is C. If your Key was E then according to this progression an E major scale would be E, F sharp, G sharp, A, B, C sharp and D sharp.
Note: Every scale consists of 7 notes then return to the same note of higher pitch like C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. From one C to another is C is one octave.
Practice one scale at a time
You must practice one scale first. For instance here you can start with C major or E major scale and practice them from them in ascending and descending order. For C: C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C is the ascending and descending is from the higher octave the same scale revers: C-B-A-G-F-E-D-C.
Watch videos
Watch videos to get ideas to hold the bass guitar, pluck the notes and how the note transition takes place between multiple strings and fret.
Notes as numbers
The numbering of notes are easy for example in a major note C D E F G A B C, where C is the 1st note, so we will call it 1st and second is D, so we will call it 2nd, and it will go sequentially for E 3rd, for F 4th and for G 5th, A will be 6th, and B will be 7th.
Play slow and with a tempo and increase accordingly
When you learn the major scale, play it with tempo or metronome or any rhythm device. Then increase the speed accordingly when you are confident and learn to play the scale appropiatly. This exercise is essential.
Conclusion
You have all the information about playing the elementary level of the bass guitar. But you know how to play the bass guitar. To carry on, you can just learn more scale and keep moving forward to be an advanced level bass player.
