newbie from EU

[kibodwin]

Hello all,
After reading up on the swimming speed of bass fish ( surprisingly fast!) I finally ended up here. I also discovered it might be illegal to play a fish, not even mentioning the potential smell!
I am an absolute beginner, I don't even have my bass guitar yet ( a hand me down from my brother) so I don't know how many strings I will have to deal with... Or if there is am amp included...
I plan to try practice 10 to 20 minutes a day during the week (weekends are busy, I might have to take up bass fishing..!).
I plan to start learning from YouTube videos so any pointers are welcome. I promise to not waste too much time on bass fishing videos.
I was also wondering if there was not a sort of effects box I could plug into and listen on headphones, I think some kid in school decades ago had something like this, I think it was programmable for different effects.
Anyhow, I hope to be making some horrible noises followed by perhaps a nice fish stew soon!

 

[kibodwin]

Another quick question if I may, would I need to do any hand exercises to help with the guitar playing? I would like to minimise any potential for muscle strain... I don't think playing bass is physically demanding but as I have never touched a bass guitar it might help to work up a bit of hand strength. Also might help in filleting the fish....

 

[MalcolmAmos]

Welcome. Hand exercises; how to hold the beast, how to get sound from it and how to mute some of the string noise - yes, that's first. The following will get into that. How to get started?

While you wait on your bass learn the notes on the fretboard. See a Cmaj7 chord and know where the C note is located. We'll get into the maj7 stuff later. Root notes first.

You'll find the root notes on the first 5 frets of the fret board. Later you can get into the rest.

I use C as my home base. The B is back a fret, the D is up two frets. The F is up a string and the G is down a string. The E is over the B and the A is under the D. Yep that will get you pounding roots to the beat of the song. If you, like most of us use fake chord sheet music. Here is what it looks like. How to get started? I used this as 1) I'm sure it is in public domain, and 2) you know the tune.

Sing the lyrics and change root notes as they come up. The beat? Call up the song on the Internet and listen while clapping the beat. May take a couple of times through the song, but, the beat will come. Now sing the lyrics and change roots as they come up - keeping the beat going.

Going to take awhile so go get in the shed and get started.

Good luck.

 

[kibodwin]

Hi MalcolmAmos,
Thank you very much for the reply, it is greatly appreciated. Sorry I was so late in replying, I was off on holidays!! I am a real beginner so I need to figure out the info you gave. I have since gotten the guitar, it needs a little work, one of the 'bridges' has fallen into the guitar, nothing a little glue wont fix. It has a custom Neds Atomic Dustbin paintjob...and is heavier than I thought it would be. I will try upload a picture of the guitar as I suspect people like seeing the gear used... I will also be getting a V-Amp2 from another friend (who sais this should be ok for practising on, I might have to update it for the bass guitar).
So now I am practising scales with some youtube videos. I will start following you suggestions once I get a bit more comfortable with it.
Thanks again for the pointers
=)