I get a lot of email here at Bass Scales about taking bass lessons, especially private lessons. As a former guitar instructor myself, I know the amount of effort it takes for a private music instructor to tailor weekly lessons to each individual student’s learning curve and I can assure you that most of them can not do this correctly and still make a living teaching.
Private Bass Lessons Suck
So what happens is they create their lessons to meet the needs of the slowest students, thus holding back students who could be learning at an accelerated rate.
When I was teaching guitar I had students in their tenth week still working on chords and other students whom I was teaching Jimi Hendrix leads to at the tenth week. The same can hold true with bass guitar lessons. One student may be learning the basics at the same time another with only the same amount of lessons may be working on modes and bass scales.
How To Learn Bass
So what is the answer? Learning on your own so that you can grow at your own rate is the fastest way to learn any musical instrument. As a former private instructor I can not with a clear conscience recommend anyone take private lessons, especially now that there are so many audio and video courses out there. And with the Internet, there is no reason why you wouldn’t use a good video course if you truly want to excel at playing the bass.
Unfortunately for aspiring bass players there aren’t as many options as there are for guitar players, which, in my opinion is kind of silly considering that playing bass requires a lot more real knowledge of bass scales and music theory than playing six string. Unless of course, you just want to play root notes and triads the rest of your life. I would hope you want more than that, right?
Which Bass Guitar Course Should I Buy?
Without a doubt the best course is Roy Vogt’s “Teach Me To Play Bass“.
I believe the quality if this course might be the reason there really aren’t many bass courses out there. No one thinks they can compete with this course. But , and here’s the drawback, the price: $187.00. I know that sounds like a lot but consider weekly lessons at $15-20 a pop. That’s $700-$1000 you’ll spend the first year, and most teachers won’t get you past what Roy covers in his first 6 lessons in a year. So I think you’ll agree the price is reasonable.
Now if you really can’t afford Roy’s course then my next choice in the Music Master Bass Guitar Course. While this course is not a complete as Roy’s, it is a heck of a lot cheaper at only $29.95. It will still get you far. And it comes with a 60 day money back guarantee.
And listen, in the interest of full disclosure I want you to know that when you buy one of these courses, I do get a commission. And even though the cheaper course actually pays me better I still recommend Roy Vogt’s course first. And the reason is simple: it’s so complete it’s the last bass guitar course you will ever have to buy.
>==Click here now to get started==<.
In some of the main posts I’ve already covered some of the bass scales box patterns as far as major and minor bass scales. On this page I’d like to get into some patterns that are little bit more spread out up and down the neck. These are the bass scale patterns you might use if you’re walking up the neck to catch a chord or if you’re playing some blues, these work great for doing non stop walking down or up under some cool guitar riffs.
For all of these patterns I have denoted the circle with the “X” in it as your root note. I have 3 patterns for both major and minor bass scales, each one starting on a different string. Your job is to learn all three and then combine them so that you can literally play the scales all over the fretboard on your bass.
First let’s look at the major bass scales. Comparing the second picture to the first you can see how the next pattern’s first note is indicated on the first pattern. We are basically starting the next pattern on the second “X” in the first scale pattern. Transition the same way from the 2nd pattern to the 3rd. Now if you laid these patterns over top of one another you would see some missing notes dues to the fact that I have not repeated any notes in any of the patterns. The standard box patterns that I’ve shown you in these posts: Major scales and Minor scales will fill in those missing notes.
Bass Major Scale Root Note 1st String
Bass Major Scale Root Note 2nd String
Bass Major Scale Root Note 3rd String
Now let’s look at the minor bass scales. Remember that to make a minor scale we flatten both the third and seventh notes in the major scale.
Bass Minor Scale Root Note 1st String
Bass Minor Scale Root Note 2nd String
Bass Minor Scale Root Note 3rd String
Between these patterns and the ones in previous posts you should be able to cover major and minor bass scales all over the neck of your bass.
Some teachers would have you learn chords first, or some bass scales but either way you have got to go beyond bass scales and 3 note chords if you really want to be a quality bass player. People who play guitar tend to think that bass playing is simple and easy. In their mind it’s just playing one root note under their chord. In fact, most guitar players think they can play bass because they’ve learn a few intervals or 3 note runs. I’m not one of those guitar players.
When I studied guitar I learned every bit of music theory information I could get my hands on, even learned classical guitar and then promptly forgot it all and got back to just playing. When I was sought after to play bass in a very booked working band I had never picked up a bass before. Within 3 weeks I’m playing bass onstage.
The reason I was able to make that transition so quickly was because of all the music theory and scale work I had done on guitar previously. When you play bass, knowing music theory, chord structure, bass scales and modes is vital to your ability to adapt to any style of music. Playing bass turned out to be much more technical and challenging experience for me. So much so that I now find playing guitar rather boring by comparison.
You need to know more than 3 note chords. You need to know more than pentatonic bass scales. Understanding how 4 and 5 note chords are built and how modes are developed from scales are essential skills every bass player needs to know. In addition to that, the physical act of playing your bass can be approached from so many more angles than guitar in my opinion: use a pick or not, popping, slapping, the list goes on.
So how do you master all this. Well unlike guitar, which I completely taught myself (other than few theory books) I found that to really delve into hardcore serious bass playing the fastest route is some sort of organized instruction. Even though I was able to get onstage with bass very quickly, the advance techniques I later learned would have taken me much longer to learn, if ever, on my own.
I was very fortunate to have found an extremely advanced bass player to learn from, but you may not know someone like. If that’s the case my recommendation is that you do not waste your money on local private lessons, but rather get the most for your dollar by purchasing a solid bass lesson instructional video/Ebook course. You will advance much faster learning through one of these bass guitar courses than taking private lessons.
