I know I’m guilty of this… I’ll be teaching some concept or idea and say something like, “It’s just the pentatonic scale…” and then play something that I think sounds really cool. But then some students will try to do the same thing and play the pentatonic shape and it just ends up sounding… Un-musical… […]
Play Bass By Ear – How To Get Started
When you know how to play bass by ear, everything changes and your life gets so easy. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to get started playing bass by ear.
How To Write More Creative Bass Lines – Get Past Roots And 5ths
Let’s talk about how to make more creative bass lines! Most beginning bass players are happy just to get through a song using roots and 5ths. They work well and they sound OK. But after a while, a lot of bass players at this level get bored and start to feel like everything they play […]
How To ‘Transcribe’ On Bass
Today, let’s talk about how to transcribe on bass. In case you don’t know, transcribing is just the process of figuring out how to play something by ear. Pretty frequently, I get emails from people asking me to give them tabs or sheet music to songs that they want to play, but can’t find themselves. […]
Expand Your Creativity In Bass Solos By Avoiding The Root
One big problem that bass players run into when they start to improvise is always coming back to the root over and over again. This makes sense, right? That’s what we’re doing most of the time when we play bass lines, so this habit carries over into our solos. The upside of this is that […]
How To Find The Key Of A Song By Ear On Bass: The ‘Intuitive’ Method
Knowing how to find the key of a song by ear is a huge win for ANY bass player. Once you know the key, you’ll be able to make very educated guesses for notes that are in the song. Even better though, it means that you can safely avoid notes that aren’t in that key. […]
