Welcome, I'm Josh with BassBuzz
and you may be a beginner on bass,
but you don't have to sound like one.
I'm gonna give you five tips
to suck less
and stop the beginner bass mistakes
that you're probably making.
Just give me 10 or 15 minutes
and I guarantee that you'll sound better
because we're actually
gonna apply these tips
by playing music together right now.
[BassBuzz Theme]
I'm gonna take you now
on a musical journey.
♪ Don't stop believin' ♪
No, not that kind of Journey.
We're gonna learn and play
a rock groove together
and in the midst of it,
I'm gonna give you five tips
to stop the suckage.
First, let's take a listen to the groove
we're gonna play to get it in our ears.
I'm gonna show you how to play this now,
which takes us to tip number one.
If you don't know any better,
you might be playing bass
with your thumb just floating around
in space or resting on
the side of the bass.
You don't want to do
either of those things
What you do want to do
is rest on the pickup
or on one of the low strings.
And this is gonna help
you find the strings
without having to look.
And it's gonna help keep the bass steady
so that you can get nice solid plucks.
And it will also help
keep low strings muted
when you don't want them ringing.
Let's try that out together
with our rhythm and plucking pattern
for this groove.
So, we're gonna start
by anchoring our thumb
on the E string because we're not using it
for any of our notes.
And that'll keep it quiet
and give us a good anchor point.
So, the rhythm sounds like this.
One, two, and three and four.
And one, two, and three, four.
I'll do that again.
One, two, and three and four.
And one, two, and three, four.
And we're gonna do that
with alternating plucking
all the way through,
except at the beginning
we're gonna do an index pluck
on the first note
and then we'll start
our alternating pattern.
So, it'll go index, index,
middle, index, middle, index, middle,
index, middle, index, middle.
So, two indexes at the top
and then all alternating from there.
So, we'll add in the fretting
hand in a minute here,
but first let's try this rhythm
and plucking pattern just the two of us.
Nice and slow so we can make sure
that we're nailing it.
Get your thumb anchored on the E string
and we're gonna start index
and then go index, middle, index,
middle, index, middle from there.
Okay, here we go just on
the open A and D strings.
One.
Two.
And three.
And four.
And one.
And two.
And three.
And four.
And one.
And two.
And three.
And four.
And one.
And index, middle,
index, middle,
index, middle.
One.
Two.
And three.
Four.
One more time.
One.
And two.
And three.
And four.
And one.
And two.
And three.
Four, let's finish with the pluck on one.
Shabam.
Nice.
If you're enjoying playing with me,
click subscribe
and then click the bell to make sure
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when new lessons come out.
We're gonna add the notes
onto our groove in a second,
but first tip number two.
A lot of beginners make the mistake
of worrying way too much about gear,
but the truth is that your sound
comes primarily from you,
not from your gear.
So, let me demonstrate.
Here's a cheap Squier jazz bass,
with old crappy, dead strings on it,
going into a cheap Fender
Rumble 40 practice amp,
going into a cheap Shure SM57 microphone.
All being recorded direct
from the microphone.
And here's what that sounds like.
How does that sound?
Does it sound like a bunch of cheap gear
or does it sound pretty good?
Here it is in the mix
with some drums and guitar.
So, it sounds pretty good, right?
It at least sounds fine
and that's because you're listening
to me and my playing,
not just to my gear.
By contrast,
here's an April Fools' video
that I put out some years back
where I make all my nice gear
sound really, really terrible.
Cheap gear is totally good enough
for most live playing
where the sound,
the exact tone of your instrument
is competing with people yelling
at each other at the bar
over a football game, okay?
That's real life.
So, don't think that you have to get
this next expensive, amazing piece of gear
to start sounding good,
it's really all about you.
Yes, if you play bass, you
need to fret with your pinky.
This is super important, it's
a very common bass mistake.
A lot of people miss this because
they don't have proper instruction.
'Cause it feels like you
don't wanna use your pinky
when you first start
playing bass, it's smaller
and it seems weaker
than the other fingers.
The thing is, that with
training and practice,
it actually gets just
as strong as the rest
and it'll make your
playing cleaner and faster
if you use it so let's
try that out together
by adding the notes on to
the groove we're learning.
Okay so we're starting with
some open string plucks
on the A string and then
our first fretted note
is the index finger on the
fifth fret of the D string.
Two plucks there and then
pinky goes to the seventh fret
of the D string, two plucks there.
Then we got a couple more open As.
And then we go pinky on the
seventh fret of the A string
to index on the fifth
fret of the A string.
Then we're gonna repeat
most of that, open A string.
Index on the fifth fret of the D.
Pinky on the seventh fret of the D.
Back to the open A and
now we're gonna slide
our hand down and go
pinky on the fifth fret
of the A string to index on
the third fret of the A string
and that's our whole line so open,
open, open, index, pinky,
open, pinky, index,
open, open, open, index,
pinky, open, open, pinky, index.
So that end part changes at
the end of the second bar,
we go seventh fret, fifth
fret at the end of the fourth
bar we go fifth fret,
third fret but it's still
the same fingering, we're
just in a different position.
Let's play that end rhythm
together, just you and me,
really slow and then
we'll bring in the band
for the slow play along, here we go.
One and two
and three and four
and one and two
and three and four
and one and two
and three and four
and one and two
and three and four
and one and two
and three and four.
Again, one and two
and index, pinky,
one and two and pinky,
index, one and two
and index, pinky,
one and two and pinky,
index and stop on the A.
Sweet.
Let's try that with the band now.
We're gonna do a slow speed and then we'll
get to the medium and the
full speed play-alongs
as we get through the rest of our tips.
So here we go with the slow speed.
One, two,
three and four
and one, two
and three and four
and one and two
and three, four,
one and two
and three and four
and one and two
and three, four.
Fretting fingering is open.
Index, pinky.
Two and pinky, index.
One, two and index, pinky.
One and two and pinky, index.
Nice, let's take a
quick break from playing
before the medium speed
and I'll give you another
important tip, tip number four!
News flash!
You don't need talent to learn bass.
As Jeff Colvin talks about
in his excellent book,
"Talent Is Overrated,"
what separates seemingly
talented superstars from the
rest of us is just putting
a lot of time into deliberate practice.
And it doesn't really matter
if you identify as a slow
learner, I've taught a lot
of slow learners in my years
of teaching and I've never
had anybody who didn't make
some kind of satisfying forward progress
by putting the time in.
Smart, structured practice
helps you learn faster
whether you do that on your
own or with a good teacher
or with some killer online lessons.
[subliminal messages]
All right, speaking of
smart, structured practice,
here's the medium speed
play-along, let's hit it.
One, two, three, four.
One, two and three and four
and one, two and three, four.
One, two and three and four
and one, two and three, four.
Another common beginner bass mistake
is plucking too hard or too soft.
If you pluck too hard,
it sounds like farts.
And if you pluck too
softly, it sounds like,
are you even playing?
I can't tell, it's so quiet and thin.
When you get it right,
it'll just sound clean
and solid and round
and full and other lovely
adjectives like that.
So let's try that together.
First of all, very important
to get your plucking dialed in.
You need to pluck across and not up
so pulling up looks like
this, a lot of people
do this without proper instruction.
You wanna anchor your
thumb like we talked about
and then pull across, so if
you're plucking the A string,
your fingers actually hit the E string
after each pluck, see that?
If I pull away, then I
don't hit the E string
after the A string pluck
and that thins out my tone,
it doesn't sound good so
we're gonna pull across
and not up in order to
get a good plucking sound.
So, try that on the A string a little bit.
Now we're gonna actually dial that in.
So first of all let's try
plucking way too hard together
and make some fart sounds.
So just helps if you grimace a little.
Just as hard as you can.
Feel how the string gets
stuck under your finger
and then it goes--
[makes fart sound]
Every time, okay, so you
got the farts dialed in?
Now, let's calm down and just very gently
pluck your bass but not too hard!
Very softly, pull away so
your tone is nice and thin.
This way no one will ever
know that we play bass.
Okay, let's shake that off, anchor your
thumb on the pick up,
pluck the A string with me.
Pull across, make sure
you're touching the E string
after each pluck and just
find the amount of pressure
where it sounds nice and full and round.
You don't hear any clacky fart noises
and you're hearing enough solid roundness
that it doesn't sound like
you're afraid of your instrument.
All right, let's try
some clean solid plucking
in context with the full
speed play-along, here we go.
One, two, three, four.
One, two and three and four
and one, two and three, four.
One, two and three and four
and one and two and three, four.
If you're like me, you
started playing bass
because you love music and
you wanna have fun playing it.
So don't let being a beginner
stop you from doing that.
You can find songs that you
wanna play at your level
right now, you can go out
and find people to play
music with at your level right now.
Having fun actually helps
you learn by increasing
levels of dopamine, endorphins
and oxygen in your brain
and it'll be easier to
get through your learning
roadblocks if you have some
fun experiences to lean on.
Click subscribe and click the
bell if you wanna get notified
when new lessons come out and
now you know that you need
to anchor your plucking
thumb, you know to pull across
not up to get that nice plucking tone.
You know to fret with your pinky
and you know not to
worry too much about gear
and you know that you won't suck forever
if you just do smart structured practice
and you know that you
should go have some fun.
Have some fun right now, it's the end
of the video, go do it.
You're avoiding some of the most common
beginner based mistakes
after just one lesson.
Now go forth, kick ass
and don't stop believing.
[bad bass playing]
[whimpers]
Sounds so bad.
[chuckles]
Oh man.
