So I was alone with my laptop and I'm ashamed to admit that I was... watching guitar videos on YouTube. [bleep bloop] I watched Paul Davids'
"10 Awesome Riffs" video and it got me thinking, "What are 10 songs that
taught me how to play bass?" So here they are, from super easy to OW
my hands are burning! You know that feeling the
first time you picked up a bass and your hands are just like, "Uh no"? We've all been there and
that's how I was feeling at age 13 when my dad showed me this, my first song on bass ever. It was only a few notes, but getting the right
one at the right time was still really challenging,
and I was probably plucking the wrong string half the time, you know, like you do when you're
starting out on bass, but I didn't care. It was really exciting
'cause I was playing bass. These notes aren't very
fast, so at this point, I didn't need much plucking speed, and if you're just starting out, beginner songs like this with
minimal plucking are great, because you can focus on
building your basic coordination without getting overwhelmed. That all changed for me when
I learned my second song, which was maybe not a great choice because it was way way faster. Keeping up with those plucks
was so impossibly hard when I first tried this, but
I really love The Ramones, so I took it as a challenge, which meant I had to work on
my alternating plucking a lot. Just starting really really slow and then gradually working
it up with a metronome. And yes, this song is supposed
to be played with a pick, but I just learned everything
with my fingers back then, which I think was good for my growth, even if wasn't the right
tone for this song. The next song, number
three, wasn't as fast, but it taught me some more complex rhythms that I hadn't dealt with before. This song wasn't a huge challenge, but it was good for me
to get used to playing those off beat rhythms,
'cause I would need that skill when we get to the funky
songs later down the list. But also, Cliff Williams
doesn't come in with the bass until right before the
chorus, which gives the song an exciting energy boost. So I learned that sometimes
being a good bass player means knowing when to shut up. I learned those three songs
all in my first couple months of bass playing, but it's
all stuff I could've learned even faster if I traveled into the future and taken my own Beginner
to Badass course. ARNOLD: I need your bass, your amp, and your BassBuzz lessons. Song number four brings us to
the next step in my journey, which was playing in a Motown and soul cover band with my mom. This one taught me some funk
fundamentals - funk-damentals? The classic, the very overplayed... Now, of course, if you're
a Headhunters nerd, you know that this isn't
even really the bass line. Paul Jackson was actually playing this - And this is a synth part. But if you're playing this in a band and the keyboard player
is not covering that part, then it is the bass line. This might've been the
first line I ever learned with this great walkup pattern, where instead of just
hitting your root note, you start three frets below and walk up, and you can find more
easy patterns like that in my Walkups video. But this pattern is so
killer for us bass players. You can use it for funk,
you can use it for disco. You can use it for gospel. And of course, for slapping. Can't let you leave without
liking and subscribing, son. ARNOLD: Do it! All right, we need to change
basses for song number five. All right, that's better. This is another one from those
early days in that cover band that showed me a more
melodic side of bass playing, and it's still one of my
favorite soul bass lines. This is one of my first encounters with this classic soul fill shape. We call that the major triangle in my Killer Bass Fills video, and we've also got this super
yummy bass solo in this tune, which was really great
shifting practice for me when I first learned it. And also, there's so many
nice long notes in the solo, which I love because us
bass players tend to play way too staccato. Which is fine sometimes, but if you get some long notes in there, it sounds nice and melodic,
more like a singer. Speaking of killer melodic playing, our next bass line, number six,
still totally blows me away. Regrettably, I don't have a Hofner around, so we're just faking this on the P bass, but isn't this an incredible bass line? It's one of Paul's
coolest bass lines ever, which is really saying something. ... Something. This one taught me a lot about
how to play with the singer, which is a skill every bass player needs to be really good at. Paul's line is pretty juicy throughout, but he's most active here,
when the voice is resting, which creates a cool
call and response effect. I can't play the original track for you without getting copyright blocked, so listen to it on your
own after this video and check out how the
bass and voice interact. I even made you a Spotify
playlist with all the songs from this video, plus even
more songs that taught me bass, and the link is in the description. All right, let's go back to the J bass. Ta-da! So as I learned harder and harder songs and I kept improving my technique, I actually started having a
new problem with my playing, which afflicts many
intermediate bass players. I'll explain what I mean
more after you hear this, but this next song, song number seven, helped me to tame this new issue and make some slightly more mature choices for my bass lines. After learning songs like "Something" and "I'll Take You There",
I developed a taste for this active melodic bass playing. But in my teenage foolishness, that often degenerated
into extreme overplaying. So this bass line taught me
another way to play melodically without overplaying by using repetition. So the first two beats of each bar are actually the same every time. It's the same rhythm, and the same note relationships, even when there's a chord change. And then the last two beats of each bar have some changing notes, but the rhythm still
stays the same every time, do do do do, three and four, do do do do, eighth, eighth, quarter. And bars one and three even
have the same notes there. So Nikolai's bass line supports the song with a cool counter melody,
but it doesn't sound like a big distracting bass solo because of this repetitive structure. But bass playing isn't
all about lovely melodies, sometimes you just have
to lay down the funk. So song number eight is from my early days playing in funk jams around
Sonoma County, California where I grew up, and if
you've ever been to funk jams, you've definitely heard this
tune. Maybe too many times. It took me some practice to
nail that swung 16th note feel. So in this song, instead
of the 16ths going evenly, like one E and a two
E and a three E and a, they're a little bit lumpy, like one E and a two
E and a three E and a. Here's what the song would sound like if they were straight 16ths. One E and a two E and a
three E and a four E and a. So it feels really different, right? It's not bad, it's just
different, a little more robotic. But if we swing those 16ths, you get a little bit more grease on it. One E and a two E and a three E and a. So I was learning a ton about rhythm and creating engaging basslines, but I was also becoming a huge bass nerd and working on my technique,
getting faster, more efficient, so song number nine takes us back to the hard rock department for another major plucking challenge. I had been playing bass
for a few years already when I first tried learning this, so keeping up with the
speed wasn't that hard. What really challenged me
was the endurance element of keeping those 16ths powering forward for five minutes straight. So besides just training my
muscles up with repetition, this song also forced me to
focus more on my breathing because when we're playing
fast for a long time, we tend to start holding our breath. But you can actually
play longer and faster if you keep those inhales
and exhales flowing. The last song on my list, number 10, also had a huge impact on my technique, and again we need to change basses. Ta-da! So I used to come home
from school and play along with this album just straight through, but this song stands out the most to me. Woo, this one was [Flight
Of Icarus scream] hard. It's a similar speed
and endurance challenge to "Stockholm Syndrome", but
in a way, even harder to pluck because of all the triplets, which makes the string crossing harder and there's faster note changes, plus there's 10 or 11
different riff changes throughout the song. It's just nuts. And just to close this out, here's the last thing I
was working on recently, which is even more nuts.
