Beginner Bass Lesson (Your Very First Steps)

[Music] [Music] if you are just starting out on bass guitar then you are in the right place in this video you're going to learn exactly what you need to get started without any of the confusion that so many students suffer from when they're just starting out now to keep things clear and focused i've split this video into six different categories so with that said let's get into it [Music] hey it's scott devine here from scottsbasslessons.com helping you take your bass playing to the next level and on this channel we focus on one thing and one thing only we focus on bass we do youtube tutorials we talk about gear and everything in between so if you are new here and just starting out on base make sure that you slap that subscribe button down below now before we get into this there are also some accompanying downloads that you can grab a drum groove that you can play along with and also a fretboard diagram with all of the notes on as well so if you want to grab them they're totally free and i've put the download link in the description down below so the first category i want to look at is the parts of the base now the first thing i want to shine a light on are these things here okay the strings these pieces of wire here this is a four string bass it's probably likely that you have a four string bass you can also get five strings six strings and hell you can go wait you can go wilds 10 string basses and all of those shenanigans as well now for beginners i actually recommend starting out on a four-string bass because it keeps things nice and simple and i am a huge fan of keeping things simple now next up is the body this is this hunker wood here okay on the body you'll find these things here these are called the pickups there's actually magnets inside these the magnets pick up the vibration of the string and then feed it down the cable into the amp and then out of the speaker okay so that's what these things are here now this is the bridge okay this is the bridge this is where the strings anchor into the body here okay and these little things here that the strings go over are called the saddles so the whole thing's called the bridge and then these little pieces here that the strings go over are called the saddles so next are the controls depending on what type of bass you have your controls will do some of the same things and some different things okay it will absolutely have a volume control on it for instance now the volume control does what it says on the packet it does the volume right okay now also if you've got a two pickup instrument okay like this you will either have a blend control which i've got on this or you might have a two pickup a two pickup instrument that has a volume for each pickup so that's the volume we've got the balance how to balance between the pickups and then we've got a little what's called an active eq as well so remember hi-fi's okay and on a hi-fi you've got like a graphic eq remember the old 80s vibes okay well this is that on a bass so you can boost the bass you can boost the treble and you can boost the middles with these three knobs here now your bass might not have them this is called an active bass which means it's got active electronics in it you might be thinking well how can i tell whether i've got an active bass or not your bass will have a battery inside this compartment if it is an active bass now the next thing is the neck okay not this neck this neck here okay so we've got the body and the neck is attached to the body now on the top of the neck around here this brown thing here this is called the fingerboard now in the fingerboard we've got these metal things here okay these are called the frets now it's the frets that actually give us the control to be able to alter the pitch of the string okay so if i play an open g string this this the thinnest string on your bass is going to be a g string okay i'm not holding it down now if we put our finger behind the first fret not in the middle so many people will tell you to put your fingers right in the middle of the frets i want it just right behind the fret okay if it's in the middle you're going to start getting the buzzing note okay we don't want buzzing notes okay so you put it right behind the fret okay what are these things here see these white dots what's going on here okay well these are just called position markers and they're just a reference point to let us know where we are on the base okay so for instance i know the first dot here is on the third fret the second is on the fifth fret the third is on the seventh fret ninth fret and then the double dots the double dots is where the octave is uh and that's the twelfth fret by octave i mean that's a g if i hold down the double dots i'm gonna get that g an octave higher same note right next up is this white thing here this is called the nut this is what the strings go over okay they go over the nut that white thing there and then they go into these things here which are called tuning pegs or some people call them machine heads so this is what you tune your bass with now these things are sat on this thing right this extra it's part of the neck obviously it goes up here but this part is called the headstock so the next category i want to look at is plugging in your base okay so you understand what all of the parts are okay how do we actually get some sound out of it well you're gonna need three specific things number one you're gonna need a base okay so hopefully you've got that down number two you're gonna need a cable okay a cable these are it's a jack cable and then we're gonna need an amp to plug into okay so your amp might look like this or it might look like a small combo amp which is where the speaker and the controls are all within one unit so you get your base first of all i want you to get your base and just plug it in to the jack socket like so make sure it's in there properly a common common mistake even for pro musicians is putting in the jack the jack socket not pushing it in hard enough okay so make sure you've got it then you get your the other end and then you put it into your amp like so and we should have okay some sound great i've got a gain and master volume on this amp but if you're just starting out you will probably just have one volume now also on your amp you've got a bunch of different things so let's talk about these and what to do with it because when i see beginners play they generally get this bit a little bit wrong and dial in some crazy tones and we just want to we want to literally pun intended dial that back a bit okay dial it back a bit in general an amp will have a treble a middle and a bass treble middle and bass okay now this amp has a low mid yours may have it may not it's all good right what i want you to do is set the bass at 12 o'clock the mid at 12 o'clock and the treble at 12 o'clock this means that your tone you've got a flat eq okay this is what it sounds like sounds great right so we've got a flat eq now you might want to boost certain frequencies you do that by obviously using these controls me personally i like to boost the bass to around two o'clock and i sometimes boost the mid okay and i've got two mid controls but if i've just got one mid control i still normally boost it a little bit to about one o'clock and that's me that's that's going to give me a good you know it's going to give me a really nice tone so the next category i want to get into is tuning your bass tuning your bass beginners never do this enough you should tune your bass every single day every single day there's nothing to be scared of okay it's super easy first up you should get a tuner get a tuner you can get a pedal tuner like this there's also uh probably the most popular thing now are the clip-on tuners that actually clip onto the headstock but you need to learn to tune up not using a tuner as well you need to actually learn how to do it on here i'm going to show you how to do that right now okay so first of all let's learn our string names you already know one we all know the g string right we've got the g string down which means we've only got three more to go the lowest string here is an e lower string than e then we've got an a [Laughter] then we've got a d and then we've got the the faithful g string okay so if you want to use an acronym for this you can just remember every angry dog growls every angry dog growls e a d and g how cool right now remember we've got that download as well below which gives you a fretboard diagram with all of the notes on there so make sure that you grab that and it also comes with a drum track that we're going to be using later in this lesson as well so once you've got your note names down we need to know how to tune it without the tuner here's the technique that i think that all beginners should start out with okay so it starts out you need to pull down on the fifth fret here on the e string you hold that down and then the open a string they're the same note right now if it was like this they're not the same note so i would know that this note here would need to be [Music] and then you do that on every string so the next one you hit you hold down the fifth fret of the a string and then you play the open d make sure that they're the same note and then lastly you hold down the fifth fret of the d string and then you play the open g string and that's how you can check that the base is in tune with itself okay now with the caveat of remember you need to make sure that the base is in this you know in tune with other instruments as well because you could actually tune a bass correctly to itself but it's going to be out of tune with other instruments that's where it really helps to you know use something like this so you can at least get one one string in tune okay and then you can try and tune it yourself next up i want to talk about technique how are we actually fretting the notes what are we doing with this hand and how do we actually sit with the instrument as well because all of that is really critical it's ultimately like the foundation of where everything starts so first of all i want to talk about when you're sitting with the bass what position your bass should be in when you practice i want you sat down on a stool or a seat that is generally gives you a 90 degree bend on your leg okay so that means like your backside isn't stuffed down in a couch and your knees are sticking up in the air and your feet are out and find a seat like a dinner table seat or something like that that you can sit on that your leg is going to be generally at a right angle at right and you're going to have a nice straight back you're then going to get the bass get the bass and you're going to put it on your right leg if you're right-handed if you're left-handed it's going to go on your left leg now rookie mistake when you start playing you get the bass you put it against your body like this and great and then you're trying to play now look at me in this position do i suddenly look quite uncomfortable look at this arm so do i play like this then i can't do this and i can't even play up here how do i get rid of my elbow do i put it up here this is what you do and they said don't worry if you've done this because so many people do it okay see the headstock and see the body push out the headstock now look at my elbow what's great so next up is plucking what i'm going to do is show you real simple exercise we're going to play eight notes on each string okay so one two three four five six seven eight okay now what should you do with this hand so when you're playing on this e string i want your thumb to be on top of the pickup this part of the arm here can be rested on here you don't want too much of an angle but a gentle angle is okay so that's a gentle angle there and i've got a space under here this part of the arm is not against the base now when it comes to actually plucking the strings here what i want you to make sure is that you're not plucking up don't you plucking up i want you to this finger to hit your your thumb one and then with the middle finger two three four five six seven eight so we want it really really nice and smooth now that stroke there that stroke is called the rest stroke it's when you plug the string and it falls into well in that case it was falling into our thumb but now if we do those eight notes on the a string one two three four five six seven eight and we're going to make sure that when we pluck that string that our fingers fall into the string below two three four five six seven eight now it's worth mentioning as well that you've probably seen i'm doing index middle index middle index middle that's what you want to start off doing right now just index middle index middle index middle none of this with the thumb or you know just start off with index middle index middle index middle trust me you'll love me for it sort of like you know a month or so down the line so d string and then you could do on the g string now me personally i actually move my thumb as i go like this you can see my thumb like hopping along there some people actually always leave it on the top of the e string okay like this now if you want to do that for now that is fine it's a focus that's down the road so you shouldn't be worrying about it just yet okay now next up is fretting a note we need to know to fret a note okay and i did briefly go over this um before but what you want to make sure is that your fingers are not right in the middle of that space okay you want it right behind the fret okay you want it right behind the fret and just experiment with moving it around now when you're doing this when you're pushing these these uh the notes down onto the frets here you've got to make sure that the position of this hand is okay as well so what you need to do is imagine you've grabbed like an orange size thing okay orange bring it round here and you put your thumb right on the back of the neck okay right on the back of the neck and then your fingers curled round and then what you do want to make sure is that you've got a little hole right through here and then this wrist needs to be dropped down if you watch me play that shape always stays the same i'm not kind of like jiggling around or anything [Music] it's all like that it's all really nice and clean and that's because i've got that foundational piece that foundation part really dialed in and correct okay so the next category i want to focus on is theory theory for beginners and this can be sound freaky or scary because we've all been at school and you know heard your music teachers say let's talk about theory and we're all like no this is just sort of like basic easy theory to get you going first of all we obviously already know the names of the strings now right we've got the e we've got the a we've got the d and the g right but what happens if you're playing with a guitarist and he's like i'm playing a c what do you do okay what do you do as a bass player if he says i'm playing a c can you play something well you actually play a c as well and you play what's called a root note so he's going to play the guitar player is going to play the chord the bass player when we're just getting started we play the root note of that chord which is a c okay so and the guitar playing the keys player can play their c major as long as we're holding down that root note remember the name a root note it means everything's gonna be good in the world now the next thing is to understand what a half step is and a whole step a whole step i think of it as three frets okay and some people think about is two frets i'll explain okay so for instance this note to this note i count one two three that's a whole step okay that's a whole step away a half step would be okay that can also be called a tone a whole tone or a semitone okay but most people especially in the us they think think a whole step or a half step okay now what i would recommend is learning the notes within the first five frets of the bass and just not worrying about the rest of it for now first five frets of the bass is going to be a really really great thing for you to do to get that download again the download is just below and it will show you well it'll actually show you the notes of the entire neck but we only want to me and you for now we just want to focus on these first five frets so now i want to teach you how to play an actual bass line we're going to start slow but then we're going to actually play it with a with a drum track as well which i think is really important for beginners because we want to be you know we want to sound like we're actually making music we don't want to just run exercises right we want to make real music so if you want the drum track it is available totally free it's with the uh the fretboard diagram actually all you need to do is hit the link down below it'll take you to a page and be able to get it there okay so the baseline itself only consists of three notes okay an open e okay then we play the the g on the third fret don't worry about the name for now just think the third fret one two three on the third fret then we're gonna put our little finger down on the fifth fret now when that little finger goes down i want all of the fingers down at the same time i don't want these two sticking in the air okay open e the third the third fret the fifth fret the third fret and then the open e now just get that under your belt to begin with once you've got that down i want you to now do it with two plucks per note okay so [Music] then once you do that i want you to do with four plucks for every note [Music] okay so remember one pluck per note to begin with just get that down then two then four then it goes back to two okay so i'm just going to play it with the drum track i've got a drum track over here so first of all with one note two notes [Music] four notes [Music] two notes one note again now we're right back at the beginning [Music] two notes four notes [Music] two notes open okay but what you can do is you can use the same same exercise on the a string same on the d string get used to playing it across the different strings because when you're playing on the different strings it's just going to feel different okay and we need to dial in our technique make sure that we're our wrist is down thumbs on the back hands nice and open all of that good stuff okay so whoo i know this been a long lesson but hopefully you've learned a lot and you understand all of the parts of the base how to plug it in how to tune it and we've talked about a little bit of theory uh we've probably talked about some stuff i've forgotten and then finally we got to playing the bass as well now if you have enjoyed the content in this video make sure that you slap that like button down below and make sure that you subscribe to the channel as well because we upload content like this all of the time we do tutorials we talk about bass gear and everything in between so if you are into bass playing which i hopefully you are if you at the end of this video then make sure that you subscribe and like this video as well and other than that dudes it's been awesome i will see you in the shed

Channel: Scott's Bass Lessons

Views: 319,619

Rating: 4.9639716 out of 5

Keywords: scott devine, bass lessons, bass guitar, soloing, funk, cover, groove, jazz, slap, tuition, masterclass, beginner, beginners, clinic

Id: W7KWZYNYpFs

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2020