Understanding what I'm actually doing.

[Roosterbooster]

Evening All.

I was looking for some advice or guidance on my Bass journey. I've been playing approx 2 years now but my music knowledge is slim to say the least.

It may be easy to suggest join a course or college to learn the basics with music but I wondered what other resources you guys have found use full or even necessary to play the Bass.

I can generally pick up a Bass and learn the of a known song's TAB and be banging out a tune pretty well and reasonably quickly. My finger work is pretty good now and I still enjoy doing covers with TAB, I seem pretty confident in front of audience who must think I can create my own music.

My ultimate long term goal in this is to be able to play in a band locally in Pubs etc and Charity events. Its more the passion 've gained for playing which is the buzz for me. And addicted is an understatement as I guess most of us here are....

So my question is do I need to learn the Theory?

If so what Theory do I need.!! I mean I would like to know a bit more but really it would be stripping back to basics!?

I hear of Chord patterns,C MAJOR- All this stuff means nothing and even when I watch a Youtube video it makes no sense to me. It may sound daft to majority.

Any advice Guys.

Be kind ;-)

 

[ebo]

Learn basic scales. Not that hard to do and it’ll open your eyes to what you already do, which is play scales!

 

[Mushroo]

In my opinion, the best theory you could learn at this stage of your musical journey, is to practice some "ear training" so you can learn songs without the TABs. I personally think having a good ear is the foundation of music theory.

The holiday season is a great time of year to practice ear training, because there are so many familiar songs constantly on the radio. For example can you figure out how to play "Jingle Bells" on the bass, without using TAB?

 

[Michedelic]

Learn about chord progressions, song structure, and as much theory as you can put up with, and then the scales will make more sense, plus you’ll be futher along.

 

[g-dude]

The more theory the better - and you’ll never stop learning new and interesting bits of theory.

I mean, you can play just the root notes of chords. It’s not very interesting, and it doesn’t make for engaging music, but it’s certainly something people do.

You can add some fifths in there. That takes it up a notch, and you really don’t need to understand much theory unless you’re playing in C Major and you’re trying to play the fifth of B.

You can also add some 3rds or some 7ths...but which ones? Major or minor? Theory will help you know what works according to the rules..and some times where you can disregard the rules.

Maybe you want to make it spicy with some chord extensions - again, theory is going to help you.

Uh oh! The singer can’t hit the notes, and you need to be able to transpose on the fly - and some of the notes are now below your lowest note? Understanding theory will help.

Theory provides the answer to every question you could have about music. Why does X? How do you Y?

Learning isn’t a destination. It’s a journey. If you ever have to ask “should I learn Z?” the answer is likely yes.