After a few months of playing and learning my scales, I find that now I am wanting to learn to read musical notation. What would be the best way to start learning to read notation - any specific books or material?

The other issue is the school band. Although it isn't exactly great, I am considering joining it - if it will help my learning. According to a few friends in the band, the bassist generally plays transposed tuba parts, since they have no tuba players. Would it be a good idea to join, even though I lack experience? Not sure if I'd be able to keep up without knowledge of musical notation though...

it depends, is it a jazz band or a concert band? if its a jazz band the bassist has his own parts and rarely does the bassist not play in a song, i have no experience in a concert band but joining either band where you are going to have to read music will help a great deal, im sort of in the same boat but i can read music just not as fast as i want, check out this thread http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=432226
it has some great tips on reading but over all the best thing you can do is to practice your reading everyday for at least an hour eventually it will get easier and easier, i also recommend taking a theory class if you can it will help you understand the music more!

Good Luck!

School band could be a HUGE help. It'll give you lots of experience playing with other people. From that you'll learn a lot about music performance, accuracy, dealing with personalities, discipline, focus, and the whole "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" thing. Plus you'll be hanging around other musicians, and contacts are much more important than chops in getting a gig. You'll meet folks who can turn you on to different kinds of music, different performers within the kinds of music you already know and love, and more importantly, you'll meet others who may want to put bands together.

jte

I went to a small low budget school and we have maybe 30 people in the entire band department. I played bass for all of the bands...

concert was a waste of time...whole notes for 4 bars, bored me to tears.

Jazz was some of the most fun I've ever had playing, really improved my reading ability, the lines really grooved, and all the parts where written for bass.

Pit band was also awsome, grease had a few challenging parts and exposed me to a lot of early rock stuff

and pep band was pretty cool too...especially since having an amp meant I got to sit on it while all the other fools had to march around in the hot sun...cept that time they gave me a drum and made me march in a parade...its so sweaty inside that silly hat.

Well, there's effectively two bands in the school.

There's the concert band, which my friend was mentioning the tuba parts about, and the 'stage band', which plays all different types of music. There's another bassist there though, but apparently, as far as the music teacher is concerned, "the more the merrier".

I remembered another problem I have - staying focused. This has been a problem for a while now. I bought the Hal Leonard Bass Method (Complete Edition) book, but I haven't really been able to work through the book (not even the first few lessons!) without losing concentration. I really need to fix this bad habit...

We had a "band class" that you could take, it was an elective once a day for a period...we basically just got a lot more practice than everyone else in the band, all the horns and stuff always got the first chair parts because of that....

Anyway the point of this story is if they have a class like this than take it, I didn't have to practice my parts outside of class and after school practice, cause I was playing them for at least 45 minutes every day...my sight reading ability got pretty good...we even had some rudimentary jam sessions right after a concert when we had no material.

Try http://www.studybass.com and use the bass clef tutor.