I've been playing guitar for about 35 years. Bass for around 10 years. I don't really consider myself a bass player, but I get away with it. I play bass in all of the songs that I record.

The bass that I play in my recordings are all memorized or written down guitar chords that I pre-arrange before recording. In other words, I don't know the fret board well enough to just have the key and start playing. I have to know the song well enough first.

I've been studying the bass fret board lately and found new inspiration. I've never been formally trained on the guitar and this new fret board learning has me as excited as I was when I was learning guitar chords.

The point is that I want to Jam on the bass and not rely on memorization. I want to be able to hear a key and play along. I'm also learning new things on the guitar because of this.

I'm finding some old songs that I try on bass pretty easy to play because of my guitar experience (and already familiar with the song), but others more complicated.

I'm also learning standard notation and figuring out some pretty cool songs to play.

Any suggestions to further my learning?

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=400209
http://guitar.answers.com/guitar/playing-a-right-handed-guitar-left-handed-upside-down
http://lefthandedguitarplayer.blogspot.com/