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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?

I find basic bass to be pretty straightforward if I do the following...here is my bass 101 lesson!

Find the root note of the chord on the A string or the D string and put my second finger on it. My example would be the third fret on the A string for a C.

Then your first finger is ready to play the third note of the chord on the next higher string and your little finger is over the fifth note of the chord on that string and the octave two strings higher. So now you have a pattern for a major chord which includes all the notes that a bass plays on a simple song.

Then shift the whole pattern one string lower for the G or 5 chord and one string higher for the F or 4 chord. So now you have all the notes you need for a 3 chord song. Move up and down the neck for different keys.

Go to Carolkaye.com. Carol has loads of bass info as well as Jazz guitar info. Her Bass DVD is a great tool for learning bass from beginners to advanced students with basic theory and even sight reading. She's also on Facebook. She's been teaching bass and writing tutorials since 1969. If you aren't familiar with her, she is the most recorded bassist in history with endless credits on hit recordings, TV theme music and Films since the 60s. As far as her bass students, some of the people who give her credit for learning from her tutorials and instructional videos have been John Paul Jones, Sting, Jaco Pastorius. You can find videos of interviews of her on YouTube and get more of an idea of her teaching methods and experiences in the LA studios. You'll also learn tons of interesting information about what the real music business was like in the 60s and 70s. I hope this helps, Ben.

Stevie

Yeah, I can recommend Andrew Ford's courses on True Fire. You'll get up and groovin on the bass in no time http://truefire.com/educators/andrew-ford.html

Thanks Colin. Sounds like a good exercise.

Hey Stevie B., I forgot about Carol. Don't know how. Thanks for reminding me.

Kolstad, I'll also check out Andrew Ford. Thanks.