Bass

Guitar
Workshop

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 Bass
Guitar
Workshop
(For Beginners)

Start to Love the 4 Big Strings

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There’s no accident in life and you are
now ready to become a bass player.
This module is for those who is curious
about the bass guitar and willing to play
it.
This lessons will help you to play along
with your family, friends, and your
friend’s friend.

From a monkey face you are going to be a Bass player !!!

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Lesson 1 : Know your Instrument
For you to love the instrument we should know what is the instrument
for and what is the parts of it.

- Bass Guitar is the back Bone of the band it often works very closely with the bass drum which
also is mixed in the lower frequencies. This is what helps gives a piece of music it's rhythmic
energy or punch and helps drive the feel and energy of a band's sound.
- Common bass guitar has 4 String but there’s a 5,6 and 12 in up strings.
- Here’s a sample of a bass guitar and the basic parts of it.

Bridge - or tailpiece, is a critical part of the bass. It is the metal plate where the strings attach
to the body. This important contact point is where much of the strings' vibration is
transferred to the body of the bass guitar

Pick up - are the heart of analogue instruments they produce sound through an amplifier.
They are a transducer which captures the string vibration via a magnetic field. The
magnetic field then fluctuates and again transforms the vibrations into an electrical
current.

 There are two categories of bass pickups: Active pickups and Passive pickups.
 Active pickups is active ones are battery-powered while passive pickups are not.

Body - falls under the dominion of the striking hand (usually the right hand)

Strings - The standard design for the electric bass guitar has four strings,

Tuned E, A, D and G.

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Neck - is the long skinny part of the bass. The material used to make bass necks plays a
fairly large role in the tone of the bass. Most necks are made out of wood. They are
usually made out of harder woods to withstand the tension the strings put on them.

Fretboard - fingerboard, or fretboard, is the face of the neck where your fingers work
their bass playing magic.

Frets - Basses usually come with 21, 22 or 24 frets. Each fret is a note. The
more frets you have, the more notes there are on each string. In most styles of music
you won't be playing in those upper frets much. If you plan to play a lot of solos, you
may find them very useful.

Nut - A small, unassuming piece of material sitting at the base of a guitar or bass'
headstock and the top of the fretboard, the nut is critical to getting the best
performance out of your instrument.

Knobs - A single tuning peg consists of a cylinder that sits in a pinion gear with a worm
drive connecting them. By threading the string through the cylinder, you can tighten or
loosen it by turning the tuning knob.

Head - A machine head (also referred to as a tuning machine, tuner, or gear head) is a
geared apparatus for tuning stringed musical instruments by adjusting string
tension. Machine heads are used on mandolins, guitars, double basses, and others,
and are usually located on the instrument's headstock.

Sample Bass player Set-up (Basic)

A. Bass player (with his/her bass of course) - bass player must have their own bass, but if you
don’t have one, you can borrow but make sure you handle it with CARE.

B. PL (Guitar Cable) - it’s should called guitar cable and it works to guitar, bass, keyboard and for
electric drums. They called it PL cause the end of it is a type of plugin equipment for radio back then
it’s called PL-55 and PL stands for Phone Line

C. Bass Amplifier – There a specific amplifier for each instrument. But Bass amp. is the one that
gives you the Low frequencies/volume intended for bass guitar.

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Lesson 2 : Know the Alphabet
Using Letter’s or the musical alphabet we are going to read our bass
Fret Board.

- There are 26 letters in the English alphabet which range from 'a' to 'z'
- In music we have musical alphabet or we called the NOTE and it consist of only with 12
letters.
- -The 12 musical alphabet or Note are

1. A
2. A# (Bb)
3. B
4. C
5. C# (Db)
6. D
7. D# (Eb)
8. E
9. F
10. F# (Gb)
11. G
12. G# (Ab)

- # (hashtag or number sign) is read as sharp. You only read the note with # when you read It
from Left to Right.
- b (Small B) is read as flat. You only read with b when you read it from Right to Left.

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- Musical note doesn’t have E# and B#.
- WHY? It’s from the keyboard keys.

- From this lesson we are going to learn how to tune a bass guitar using a tuner.
- Cause every musical note has a pitch (tone/sound)
- Pitch - the quality of a sound governed by the rate of vibrations producing it; the degree of
highness or lowness of a tone.
- So the Bass 4 string and each sting has a note. We are going to read it from the top to bottom
- 4TH string - E. 3RD string - A. 2nd string - D. and 1st string - G.
- To memorize it use it as acronym EADG - Eat And Drink Grape.
- For our own language
- EADG - Eto Ako Diba Gwapo ( for Boys)
- EADG - Eto Ako Diba Ganda ( for Girls)

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Lesson 3 : Know how to Write
We are going to write and imagine the Musical note on our Fret board.

- Note Cycle - The easiest way to create a cycle of notes is chromatically:

Half step by half step, fret by fret. (The interval between any note and
the note one fret higher is known as a half step.) Visualizing on the guitar,
you can start with an open E string, naming the notes on every fret:

- We are now going to name every fret on our fret board

- We are going to start with the given letter per string
- 4th string we Start with E next is F and etc.. and we are going to follow the same rule in the next
string

- Fretboard usually have 21-24 frets but we are just going from 0 (open string) to 12 fret cause
the 13 fret will be the same with note for Open string
- From a fret board there are inlay or guitar inlay

- Guitar fret inlays are the markers along the neck of the guitar, usually circular dots that serve
as a visual aid so you can guide your hand to the notes you intend on
playing. Here's an easier answer for beginners: “They tell you
which fret you're playing when you look down at your neck.

- Usually Inlay are located in Fret 3.5,7,9,12,15,17,19,21, and 24

- Let’s put the notes in your fretboard now the 1st string is on the top and the
- 4th string is on the bottom like in the picture of the fretboard.

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Lesson 3 : Know how to Search
We are going to identify were is the note in each string.

- From this moment you should already have idea about the cycle note.
- Aside from the note from the designated string we can also found the same note in the other
string.
- Ex: E is the Open string for 4TH string and also we can find it at the 2nd string 2nd fret.
- For this one we are just going to identify it from 1st Fret 12th fret.
- Guitar Inlays will help us.
- I suggest you can write it down in your own note book so you can easily memorized it.
- Grab your bass and let’s check it now.

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 Lesson 4 : Lets Count

In this lesson we will know the right positioning of the hand and fingers
` togerther with counting so we ready to play the Bass.

Left Hand Right Hand

For playing use Index,Middle,Ring, Use Index and Middle Finger for playing
Little Fingers Thumb for support and Playing (Slap)
Use Thumb finger for Support

Now you know the basic positioning of the finger

Grab a Metronome or any metronome app and set any beat to practice.
For left finger technique place it to any frets and follow through the beat ,whilefor the right
fingers use two finger alternate picking (imagine that your right as a small human feet and play it
like it’s walking along to the beat)

Begin it with slow BPM sample is 80 BPM and play it from the 1st fret of the bass from 4th string
to 1st and vice versa.

This is only a practice for playing the Bass so your Fingers will be familiarize the move and to
get stretch for you not to get injured or not to get easily tired.

Always count 1 2 3 4 together with the beat , you can count Out loud to easy to familiarize you
can count using your mind and tap your feet or any movement that help you through follow the
beat and play the rhythm and groove.

Sample Exercise For Left Fingers

Follow the numbering of the fingers
1234
1432
1243
3241
And you can experiment

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Lesson 5 : Put it Together
Let’s talk about scales . The basic definition of a scale is a set of musical notes arranged in
order. Most people are familiar with the C major scale as being the one where you start at middle
C on the piano and just play all the white keys up the keyboard until you’ve covered the notes C,
D, E, F, G, A and B, eventually hitting C again an octave above where you started.

This is usually the first scale we learn, but there are different types of scale, each with their own
individual sound, some containing different numbers of notes. They sound so different due to the
variations in patterns of intervals between notes in each scale.

**Scale provided are some of the basic scale for more scales have time to study the music
theory**

Major Scale C D E F G A B C

Minor Scale C D Eb F G Ab Bb C

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Major Pentatonic Scale C D E G A C

Minor Pentatonic Scale C Eb F G Bb C

This is only one of the basic Scale for bass for some samples and bass scales and more
explanation you can visit Guitarscale.org.
Also we recommend to read and watch other stuff online
You can visit onlinebasscourses.com and
youtube pages like Studybass , Dan hawkins online bass courses
Talking bass,Bassbuzz and many more..

Extra Lesson is about Bass app that you can use.

Thank You,

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