Bass Exercises.

[bassrockz20]

Hi guys, I was just wondering, does anyone know any good Bass Guitar exercises??

 

[Mushroo]

Jam along with your favorite radio station for 30+ minutes a day.

 

[Ewo]

Jon Liebman's got a book called (IIRC) Bass Aerobics. Good exercises for fingering (gets all four fretting fingers involved), position shifts, and reading. Well worth the bucks to buy it and the time spent working through it.

 

[Ralph Notoro]

Scales and a metronome.

 

[MalcolmAmos]

Hi guys, I was just wondering, does anyone know any good Bass Guitar exercises??

We play the chord tone 90% of the time so major, minor, dominate and diminished chord tones (aka arpeggios) need to be in muscle memory. And yes do those to the beat of a metronome. Start slow and build up.

My old standby chart of generic bass lines using the major scale box as a Rosetta stone may help. Copy this and file it away, no way you can remember all this:

Bass Patterns based upon the Major Scale box.

Major Scale Box.

G~~|---2---|-------|---3---|---4---| 1st string
D~~|---6---|-------|---7---|---8---|
A~~|---3---|---4---|-------|---5---|
E~~|-------|---R---|-------|---2---|4th string

Cmaj7 chord coming up in the song. Find a C note on the 3rd or 4th string. Place the box's R on that note and play the spelling for the Cmaj7 chord - it's spelling is R-3-5-7. If it was a C7 chord the spelling for a C7 chord is R-3-5-b7. etc. Get some spellings under your fingers.

Basic Chords

• Major Triad = R-3-5 for the C chord.
• Minor Triad = R-b3-5 for the Cm chord.
• Diminished Chord = R-b3-b5 for the Cdim chord.

7th Chords

• Maj7 = R-3-5-7 for the Cmaj7 chord.
• Minor 7 = R-b3-5-b7 for the Cm7 chord.
• Dominant 7 = R-3-5-b7 for the C7 chord.
• ½ diminished = R-b3-b5-b7 for the Cm7b5 chord.
• Full diminished = R-b3-b5-bb7 for the C with the little o.

See a chord and play it's chord tones. As every key will have three major, three minor and one diminished chord it's a good idea to get your major, minor and diminished bass line chord tones into muscle memory so when you see a chord your fingers just know what will work. Now the song may only give you enough room for the root, or root five - adapt and get as many chord tones into your bass line as needed. Root on 1 and a steady groove from the other chord tones plus something to call attention to the chord change is what we do.

Generic Notes - for your bass line.

• The root, five and eight (R-5-8-5) are generic and fit most any chord. Remember the diminished has a flatted 5.
• The 3 is generic to all major chords. So R-3-5-3 will fit under any major chord.
• The b3 is generic to all minor chords. And R-b3-5-8 will fit under any minor chord. Why the 8? Well the 8 is just another root in the next octave.
• The 7 is generic to all maj7 chords. Yep, R-3-5-7 fits nicely.
• The b7 is generic to all dominant seventh and minor seventh chords. G7 = R-3-5-b7 or Gm7 = R-b3-5-b7.
• The 6 is neutral and adds color, help yourself to 6’s. Love the sound of R-3-5-6 with a major chord.
• The 2 and 4 make good passing notes. Don’t linger on them or stop on them, keep them passing.
• In making your bass line help yourself to those notes, just use them correctly.
• Roots, fives, eights and the correct 3 & 7 will play a lot of bass.

Start with roots, want more add the 8. Still need more bring in a 5 for R-5-8-5. Still need more the correct 3 and 7 will fit nicely. Some songs get by nicely with just root notes to the beat of the song, others will want more. The number of notes per measure is left up to you. Its art, not science.

Scales; yes gotta do our scales. So our fingers get to know where the notes are on our fretboard and our ears start recognizing the sound of the good and bad notes.

• Major Scale = R-2-3-4-5-6-7 Home base
• Major Pentatonic = R-2-3-5-6 Leave out the 4 & 7
• Natural Minor Scale = R-2-b3-4-5-b6-b7 Major scale with the 3, 6 & 7 flatted.
• Minor Pentatonic = R-b3-4-5-b7 Leave out the 2 & 6.
• Blues = R-b3-4-b5-5-b7 Minor pentatonic with the blue note b5 added.

Let the major scale be your home base then change a few notes and you have something different. No need to memorize a zillion patterns. Let the major scale pattern be your go to pattern - then adapt/adjust from there.​

OK fine, how to use all that I know is the question. These two videos should help pull all of this into focus.