Learning Bass

Practice more, talkbass less. Advice I simply cannot follow myself.

 

That actually sounds pretty good, I might want to try myself - what's the link? I've been playing bass forever, but never have learned to read bass clef properly, it's past time.

 

I started reading lessons at 49. Now at 60, I’m proficient but I’m not in a rehearsal-gig environment where it’s needed. I just got bored learning just pop/rock/country tunes by ear. Simandl II has a lot of tenor clef notation that forced me to learn that and it was a struggle but now it’s almost instinctive. This handy online tool helped greatly: Tenor Clef Practice | Music Notation Training

 

Back in 1961 when I was 9 years old I started learning to read music for the accordion lessons my parents sent me to. As expected the music was very simple at first and got more complex as the lessons advanced. When I switched to bass that reading experience carried over but I eventually lost a lot of my facility for reading music due to disuse.

About 10 years ago I felt the need to jump start my reading so I took a couple of piano courses at a local college and that helped me to get my reading chops back quite a bit and I was able to translate that to the bass.

I think online reading courses are an excellent idea.

 

...and I think local college piano lessons are a great idea, too, I'll check that out.

I am already using online app Yousician to restart on piano, but just occurred to me I can also use it to learn to sightread on bass and guitar. I can skip past the bulk of the guitar and bass lesson material and just use the notation learning exercises (actually uses the mic to listen to you play to verify you got it right, pretty kewl).

 

I've got some old stringbuilder books for bass violin. I'd go to your local store that sells band and orchestra instruments and grab a bass violin book. Start with the easy stuff and get to the point where you absolutely understand how to read music before you go on to the next boring book... again...you'll be bored... but if you can't read bass clef music you don't have a prayer in a high school jazz band.

Eventually you'll get past the open string quarter notes, and the simple rhythms. but if you can't handle the easy stuff you'll be overwhelmed the first time you audition and they expect you to sight read in front of the whole band. It's probably no different than you did on your first instrument.

Horror story... I tried to convince a friend of mine to audition for the jazz band, to this day, he was the best keyboardist I'd ever known. He showed up, couldn't sight read music and looked and felt, like a fool. 30 years later he still gives me a hard time.... he was 10 times the keyboardist of the girl that they put into the band, but she could sight read.

 

In his studio days long before the Yardbirds and Zep, Jimmy Page was the studio lead guitarist for pretty much everything. Except he couldn't sight read. So yeah, they had another guitarist who could, and he probably actually played on more recording in that time period than Jimmy did.

In some (many) contexts, reading is critical. In others, not so much. But developing the ability is never detrimental, imho, it's always positive. But I still suck at it, except for treble clef on a clarinet. Doesn't transfer to bass at all.

 

I was lucky, started as a classically trained Bass Violinist. Picked up bass guitar in Middle school and it made Jazz band a breeze... only issue was the rare 8 bars where they gave me chords to improvise..... glad to say after a lot of years I'm better now. And when it's not so good I just call it Jazz.