Fun songs and things for bass guitar

[joeyzaza]

Hello. I'm a guitarist, but I've just picked up the bass not long ago, so I have a decent enough left hand with speed and independence. Thing is, I love to play slap and fingerstyle. Especially funk type stuff. It's just, I'm a little bored with the slap bass exercises now, and it's a little harder to find stuff like that to learn on bass that isn't just like pedal tone. It doesn't have to be dead simple, but certainly not 170 bpm billy sheehan or incredibly complex stanley clarke stuff, you know what I mean Anyway, whatever you think would be fun to learn.

[BassChuck]

Sometimes just playing melodies from songs that you know. Whatever that are, is fun. Christmas carols, kids songs... old stuff.

If you read music, you'll get a world of enjoyment and music experience from digging into the Cello Suites of J.S. Bach. Something else that is fun for reading and for expanding musical horizons is to get some orchestral bass parts (check out www.shar.com) and play along to the recordings. Start off with Haydn, Schubert, Beethoven and work into the more demanding composers. Yea, I know, you won't ever perform this music on BG, but its interesting to try different things.

Just jamming to the radio is highly informative, especially the commericals.

[Alvaro Martín Gómez A.]

Try this shorty:



As an student told me after hearing me playing it: "Hey teacher! Please transcribe that for me! You don't know how many friends you can make by playing it!"

[JimmyM]

LOL...Super Mario Bros! I often play that at soundchecks, and he's right...you make friends all over the place at first, but once you've played it 20 or 30 times, diminishing returns kick in.

[MikeyFingers]

Try the Chili Peppers song "Power of Equality" from the album Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magick.....actually, try anything from that album. It's all very funky, lots of fun to play, and most of it isn't really hard.