For help on how to get good stuff out of the beast -
How to get started?
Your guitar sheet music can fold right into your bass lines if you, instead of strumming the chord, play notes of the chord, one note at a time, to the beat of the song (or beat of the drummer). That getting started link will go into detail on how many notes are needed.. It should give you a good overall view of what you will be doing for the first several months.
Where those notes are located enters into the picture as we will be using more than just the first 4 frets. Copy and save this fretboard chart.
We guitar guys want to fill our bass lines too full of "stuff". For right now I recommend less being more. Locking with the drummer's kick drum is much more important than notes. Falling into a groove with all the other guys is our goal. We and the drummer are the foundation of the song. If there is no drummer YOU are the beat master. Yes counting may come into your life for the first time, more on that later. As good as your internal clock is now it probably is not up to par for bass work. In walks the metronome and drum tracks.
Roots to the beat and when that flows bring in the five - for R-5 or R-R-5-5 or any combination of those notes, i.e. R-5-8-5, yep the 8 is just a root in the next octave and lets you fill out your bass line. The getting started sticky will go into detail about all those R's, 5's, 8's, etc. A year from now we can start bringing in the rest of the chord tones, aka, the 3's and 7's and after that the rest of the scale, aka, the 2, 4 and 6.
Roots to the beat for now. Welcome and good luck.
