A year ago, my wife and I celebrated our 7th anniversary. To my surprise, her gift to me was a bass guitar. I was surprised because before that day, I had never touched a real guitar. I hadn’t expressed any real interest in playing any guitar (lead, acoustic or bass) besides playing Guitar Hero on our Nintendo Wii. So, here I was with a bass and no clue how to play it. Little did I know that my wife had pre-arranged with a friend from our church for him to work with me to teach me to play. While he was more than willing to work with me and provide me with music, I felt the need to learn at least something about the bass prior to meeting with him. Of course, I turned to the Internet to see what I could learn. No surprise, my search turned up tens of thousands of results for “learning bass guitar”. Results ranged from basic tips and tricks to full scale, pay-for, schooling lessons complete with video, materials and online help from “experts”. Of course, not knowing anything about playing bass, I didn’t want to dump money into something that may or may not prove to be useful. I wanted to stick with the free resources. After checking out several sites, I finally came across studybass.com. This site has been amazing.
Studybass.com is a free site that offers a full series of lessons for both beginners and experienced players. While it doesn’t offer live expert support, it does include interactive lessons and tutorials. I started working through the lessons in the suggested order on the site and before I knew it, I was playing basic bass parts. The site starts with techniques for holding and playing the bass as well as knowing and understanding the parts of your instrument.
After just a few weeks of working through the lessons on this site, I met with my friend and he couldn’t believe that I hadn’t played bass before. He continously said that he was amazed at my technique and comfort with the instrument. That just shows how well the lessons on this site are constructed.
Although the site is an amazing resource, it doesn’t provide a few things. 1) It doesn’t provide actual songs for you to play. References and suggestions for songs are there, but it is up to you to find the songs and purchase them. 2) The site can’t critique you. The descriptions and illustrations on the site are amazing clear, but if you mis-interpret something or just develop a bad habit, the site isn’t going to tell you. 3) The site isn’t going to give you experience of playing with other people.
The last two things on the list are things that you will have to get from real people in your area. I was fortunate to have someone meeting with me and he was able to point out some things for me to correct and to make additional suggestions. In addition, about 3 months ago, I started playing bass with our church band. This has been the most valuable lesson of all. Getting the experience of playing with other folks, for an audience, is something that you just can not learn from a website or an instructor. It is something that you just have to do to learn. I encourage anyone who is learning bass to find a place where you can start to play. You’ll find that your skill level will jump an incredible amount once you perform a few times.
I’ve been playing for just about a year now and am absolutely loving it. I came from not knowing anything about a bass guitar (I don’t think I could have even picked one out from a regular guitar) to playing every few weeks for an audience of 200-300. My wife teases that she’s created a monster.
One other thing worth noting is a place to get equipment and gear. I’ve bought most of my equipment from musiciansfriend.com. They have a great selection and very good prices. While this is a great site, you should also check out your local music shops. There you can get the opportunity to play guitars and amps. You can also pick up your last minute gear, which is sometimes necessary. A local shop can also give you advice and help if you have questions about your instrument.
