by Easy bass solo: If you’re a beginner, it almost sounds impossible. How can taking a bass solo be easy?!?! But imagine this:
You’re at a gig, on stage, bass in hand, and things sound amazing! You’re standing next to the drummer, both great big smiles on your faces.
Song after song, you’re grooving hard, locking in, making the whole band sound incredible – you could do this for hours.
Then something happens you don’t expect. The singer yells to the crowd:
“Ladies and gentlemen – want to introduce to you our bass player. GIVE IT UP FOR OUR BASSIST!!!”
The crowd cheers, everyone in front of you on the stage moves out of the way and stops playing. It’s just you and the drummer now and as the hot beam of the spotlight creeps across your face, it dawns on you:
They want you to take a bass solo…
Now this is just a hypothetical right now, but if this were your reality right now. How would you feel?
Would you be filled with bulletproof confidence? The kind of confidence where you’d take 4 steps forward to the front of the stage, put your foot up on the foldback wedge and wow the crowd with your soloing chops?
Or would you be filled with unimaginable dread at the thought of doing anything but play the root notes?
If you’re more in the 2nd camp, I understand! Soloing can be intimidating – even for bassists who are seasoned veterans.
But today, I want to show you one of the best ways I know to learn the language of soloing on bass. I’ve used it for years and continue to use it to this day. In fact, I used it in the process of creating this week’s video.
It guarantees that you’ll:
- Play great-sounding notes
- Play great-sounding rhythms
- Always make a great impression when you solo
So what is it?
‘Stealing’ Other People’s Bass Solos
And I don’t mean stealing in a malicious way. You’re simply copying something you know sounds good, so you can sound good too.
Musicians learn the language of music in the same way that babies learn to talk. Babies steal ‘licks’ (words/phrases/sentences) from the world around them and learn to communicate that way.
You can do the same on bass!
And if you’re wondering how you can get started doing this for yourself, I’ve got three beginner-friendly solos you can take and copy note-for-note and get comfortable with the idea of taking a solo.
The first one was actually the very first bass solo that I learned myself back in my high-school rock band days and I still use one of the ideas I learned from it today – more than a decade later.
Check out the lesson here:
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Now do you have to be playing these exact songs to get something out of these solos? Absolutely not! You can extract your favorite licks and play them over just about any song that you like.
It’s a ton of fun, and because you’re copying great bassists, you know you’re always going to sound fantastic. Good luck with the lesson and have some fun with these easy bass solos!
Cheers,
great lesson cheers luke ?
Thanks Luke I will try and run through them.. Peter.
Thanks for checking it out John!
Thank you for those tabs & notation. How do I get the audio tracks?
Hey Paul – they’ll be in the email that you get when you fill out the form. Let me know if it doesn’t come through and I’ll take care of it for you.
Luke
Thank you very much Luke!! I was just wandering how to start soloing at my beginner level and.. I got your lesson.
Awesome 🙂
Great timing! Haha! Hope it’s helpful for you.
Thanks Luke for this lesson
All good stuff as usual
kevin
Cheers heaps for giving it a watch Kevin!
Hey Luke. Just to say I am really enjoying your lessons. I am going on 70 and though I have dabbled with guitars (not very well I am afraid) as I am profoundly deaf. The things my hearing spectrum actually falls within the bass spectrum so when my family brought me a bass and amp I was really happy to find that I can almost pick up most of the notes.Your site has been instrumental in helping me to enjoy playing again . I still have some problems with my fingering but I am hoping to eventually work it out. Keep up the good work and I wish you every success. Cheers Billy
That’s awesome Billy – so cool that you can still play and enjoy music, even with your hearing the way it is now!
Thanks Luke I will try and run through them.. Peter.
This is a great mix of solos Luke. Funky to melodic.
Your teaching method is A plus and thanks for always having tabs and audio tracks available. I find it very essential.
So glad you like them Theofani, and great to hear all the tracks and tabs are actually useful as well!
Hey thanks for the notation but I can’t find the backing tracks. Where can i download them?
The tracks would have been sent to the email address you used to request the notation. Be sure to check your ‘junk’, ‘spam’, or ‘Promotions’ just in case it was sent there by mistake.