Songwriting Habit - Learning the Bass Guitar - First lessons

Learning the Bass Guitar can be lots of fun and easy to do. Here are a few steps to get you started.

The Bass guitar is a foundational instrument in any rock band. Its role is important as it provides the rhythm and the core notes to any song. Together with the drums, the bass is the glue that keeps the band together.

What does it look like?

The Bass has four thick strings, unlike a normal guitar that has 6 strings. It has a head, neck and body and is usually plugged into an amplifier to get its sound.

The Bass Guitar

The four strings are E, A, D & G.

Exercise 1 - How to play the open strings E, A. D, G

Above are all of the notes of the Bass guitar written in music notation and where they are placed on the guitar.

In music notation the notes move from A B C D E F G.

Because the lowest note on the Bass is an E, we start from E and move up going from E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E etc..

Along the neck and finger board of the guitar there are frets. These divide each section into notes like the white and black notes on a keyboard. These frets also include the in-between notes such as sharps #.

Generally the notes start on the 4th String: Open E, F, F#, G, G#

String 3 is: Open A, A#, B, C, C#

String 2 is: Open D, D#, E, F, F#

String 1 is: Open G, G#, A, A#, B, C

As you can see each note moves up a fret on the guitar.

Exercise 2. Playing single notes on the fretboard

The video shows you how to play single notes on the bass guitar.

Exercise 3. Every Breath You take lesson

Guitar Tablature is where we use fret numbers to tell us what note to play on a particular string.

This song starts on 0 which means open string. It is also written over the bottom line which represents the E string on your bass guitar. That is the lowest string on the bass.

The next number is 4 which represents the 4th fret on the bass. It is also written over the bottom string of the guitar.

Watch this video which shows you where the bass guitarist is playing using the tablature.

To purchase the full 8 Bass Guitar lessons go to the Member’s Area at Songwritinghabits