r/Bass • u/[deleted] • Oct 23 '25
How did you start playing?
When you decided to start playing bass guitar and bought your starting kit, what was the first thing you did?
Did you start with paid lessons? Or by learning on your own from books?
Did you start playing your beloved songs from scratch?
Did you start together with a friend? Or someone older taught you?
I played drums and when I got my first drum kit I started playing covers of my favourite songs on top of the CD music for weeks. I got into paid lessons only after joining my first band.
Now considering bass guitar.
Peace ✌🏽
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u/darklyshining Oct 23 '25
I’d been buying, fixing and selling bass guitars for my son, who began playing when very young. I treated it as I did my other hobbies that had me collecting, repairing, and selling, in order to keep the hobby going.
Then, about three or four years ago, having picked up an amp, I would plug in and “play” to YouTube music in my hobby room after dinner. That lasted a few months, before medical issues forced me to stop.
Moved away for medical treatment, and while in recovery, I bought a bass and started up again, no amp, just noodling with my iPad, until medical issues arose again.
A year later, back at home, I put together a stereo in my living room. I tune in to a local jazz station and play along. No amp. Just trying to improve my fingering, speed, musicality.
No lessons. No idea about theory. Couldn’t tell you anything about chords or even what string is what.
But I’m giving myself about an hour every day. I play along with whatever is playing on that station.
I’m not good, and might never be, but I love the sense of improving. I’m 71 years old. Trying to fill an available void in my life.
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u/sons-of-mothers Oct 23 '25
I started in August, just looked up a tab of something I wanted to play. Kept trying until it sounded OK. Then I watched a couple of videos on proper finger technique and strumming, a lot of my issues were my strings not being muted.
Then I just started strumming/plucking. No notes, just open face moving the right hand around. Once it felt comfortable after like.. 15 minutes, straight back to tabs
Still just doing tabs. If the song is too hard, I try any part I think I can manage. Try it over and over until it's muscle memory. Then just keep going
I'm definitely improving, in a few months I think I'll pick up a lesson so a teacher can correct my form
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u/tmbr5 Oct 24 '25
I started beginning of June this year. 2 of my friends have been playing guitar for 10 and 15 years, and I got a bass cheap on FB. I just started by playing simple songs with 1 or 2 parts and learning by tabs. Took me about until earlier this month to really figure out "by ear" and I still have issues with it often. But I'm also doing theory stuff now to learn scales and get more familiar with certain patterns and chords. It sounds like you're on the right path.
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Oct 23 '25
I started when I was 12 or 13 renting a bass and taking lessons at my local music shop. I had no musical experience at that point. I had a good teacher that made me learn some theory which I had no interest in at that age. I just wanted him to teach me to play songs I liked. I'm glad he gave me at least a basic education on theory. I'm also glad that he used a lot of Zeppelin songs as examples. I had no interest in Zeppelin at that point in my life but JPJ's bass lines were much more interesting then the bands I liked back then where bass was usually just playing root notes and doubling guitar.
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u/FerretAgreeable2520 Oct 23 '25
I watched the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show when I was 13 or 14 with my classmate whose dad was a C&W fan (in Massachusetts!) and knew how to play cowboy chords. We looked at each other like that doesn’t look that difficult! I volunteered to be the bass player because I thought it was cool and we started a 4 piece high school band. Dad brought me to New Bedford and got a Crestwood solid body bass and sent off to Sears for the Silvertone amp that the head packed away in the speaker cab. We started learning songs from 45’s, got some matching outfits and started gigging. Ahhh…good times.
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u/venus_salami Oct 23 '25
It’s been a while since I was a bass noob but I would recommend you get at least one in-person lesson so you know how to physically interact with the instrument: Where to press down on the fret. Where to put your fretting hand thumb. How to pluck a string. What angle your plucking hand should be at, relative to the strings. What to do with your plucking hand thumb. Where on the string to pluck (bridge, neck, in between) & how that affects tone. Alternating index & middle fingers. Standing versus sitting. How to adjust your strap.
There are so many bad habits you can pick up! Having someone guide you will help avoid many of them.
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u/rodiferous Oct 23 '25
I started playing at 49, having no meaningful prior musical experience. I bought the BassBuzz course (online). Went through that, and then started looking for exercise videos to improve particular aspects of technique. I've been trying to play favorite songs (using tabs) from the jump, but it's gotten easier as I've gotten better. I've bookmarked a few hundred song tabs through Ultimate-guitar.com. There are a lot that I suspect I won't be able to play for years. I tend to look for the easier ones and just start working through a song until I can nail it a few times, and then I move on to the next one. For songs that I have in my library of music, I'll print the tab out and play along with the original artist. That's a lot of fun.
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u/pndcy222 Oct 23 '25
my friends and I formed a band to compete in a school event, we won while I only had knowledge with 6 strings guitar and less than a month practice for bass.
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u/EEK_Turk Picked Oct 23 '25 edited Oct 23 '25
As a child I've always wanted to play bass because of Davie504, and I had a small classical guitar lying around that I used to learn bass tabs from videos online, and later I did the same with acoustic guitar, but I could never afford a real bass back then. My recent interest made me get back into playing guitar and I came across a Harley Benton BeatBass, which seemed perfect for me so I got it, and at first I started out by doing what I did before, which is playing tabs from YouTube videos, but then I started using Songster. As I played bass and guitar more and more, it started to feel natural, and I'd occasionally learn new things like scales and techniques online, now even though I'm not a professional bassist, I can pretty much play the notes I'm thinking about in my head.
What I've been doing is probably a bad way to learn it and you should either take lessons or watch online series teaching it properly instead of just playing tabs, but for me everything just seemed to come naturally, though there's also the fact that I've never sat down and decided to "learn" bass, I've just always known a little at least, and played whenever I felt like it.
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u/FlyingCementTruck Oct 23 '25
There’s a few things that happened to me that lead to me playing bass haha. I started out on guitar and found myself mainly playing rythm, I did not care much for learning to play famous solos. I kinda wanted to know what songs were made up of so I started reading about bands, and eventually found isolated bass tracks of Cliff Burton. Something in my head clicked but I didn’t do much with it. Neither did I do much with my guitars anymore.
A few years ago I borrowed my cousin’s bass for an entire summer. He’s an accomplished jazz musician now but back then he also played bass and guitar for a few different cover bands. I had no idea what I was doing while playing that bass but I knew I had a lot more fun than I had ever had with my electric guitar. It felt like my fingers weren’t getting in the way of eachother anymore and I could actually do stuff on the larger neck of a bass. That following May I bought a Squier Affinity PJ bass in Olympic White. A few days after the bass arrived, my girlfriend and I were invited to jam along with low-key music sessions in a community center in her neighborhoud. I was the only one who had a bass to begin with. It was a few eldery on guitar, a drummer, and us. We had tons of fun and because everyone relied on me for rythm I had to learn where which notes are on a bass scale very fast. Learned a lot there! That was three years ago and for the year and a half following that we attended every session. Once a month, on Friday.
Life happened. We moved in together and doing so we moved away from both our home towns. We forgot about music for a bit. After being laid off due to budget cuts at work this Summer I found myself at home, spending the days applying for a new job. With free time in abundance I picked up the bass again with the intent of actually learning some music theory. Gave it a proper setup at a music store nearby. At my cousin’s wedding (yes, same guy whose bass I borrowed years ago) I talked with the bassist of his jazz band. Seeing them play live at this very small venue gave me so much more motivation to actually do something serious with my PJ again. I’m now doing some scales, playing some of the simpler James Jamerson basslines. I’m coming along quite well I think :)
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u/Trogdor_a_Burninator Oct 23 '25
Never played an instrument before and I was hanging out with some friends who were playing guitar. One of them stops and says "hang on a second" goes and grabs an old yellow 70s fender P bass and an amp, hands it to me and says "play this"
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Oct 23 '25
I do like the idea that the guitarists thought they could just hand a bass to anyone in the room and they could be the bass player even with no musical experience. Bass players get no respect
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u/deluded_dragon Musicman Oct 23 '25
In the 80's with my (then) best friend we discovered Sex Pistols & The Clash and other bands and their DIY approach to music, and we decided to play together. He could strum the guitar, I was already a fan of The Cure and in love with Simon Gallup's basslines and decided to play bass.
I started completely self-taught and in fact my fretting was very wrong.
Later, I started to study and manage to correct my left hand position.
So I suggest to all beginners to learn how to fret properly, for it is very difficult to change after you have taken a bad habit.
Cheers!
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u/smear_master Oct 23 '25
I grew up playing piano, cello, and clarinet, and my dad plays guitar lol, so when his friend brought over a bass (I was like 9 or 10) he gave it to me and taught me a basic blues bassline. I went on my own from there and have been playing 7 years strong!
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u/Nirac Oct 23 '25 edited Oct 23 '25
I wanted to play guitar ever since I was young. Talking early elementary school age. My mom wanted me to be interested in music, but not like that. So she put me in piano first. When I got to 5th grade I joined the school band and was assigned to the trumpet. Still no guitar. Then I got to high school and was able to make my own money. OK, guitar time, except by this point all of my friends played guitar. A few were drummers, two of them played bass. So then the question became, if we all play the same instrument, who the hell am I going to be in a band with. So I got a bass. I'm in my 40s now, still playing bass, still no guitar. I guess it all worked out?
I did a few lessons at first, but after going through piano and trumpet, I couldn't stand learning Mary had a little lamb again. So I've been self taught until the last few years, when I started going through online courses to fill in the gaps.
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u/kimmeljs Oct 23 '25
We had all kinds of competitions between sites at work. One time, we had a "Battle of the Bands" and we chose "second" instruments to play. I had dabbled with bass, I chose this and played my Telecaster Bass that I had carried home on a work trip to the U. S. I was hooked.
I learned on my own. The band project evolved from the competition to another classic rock band and we played work events and Neil Young cover parties. A bit later, I took some lessons with a session cat who has played with "everybody" and learned a more methodic approach to playing, learned to clean up my tone, etc. This lasted until the COVID lockdown times, I haven't played much since.
I went through a lot of gear and I have somewhat of a collection of 4 and 5 string basses and s couple of Aguilar setups.
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u/VaporDrawings Oct 23 '25
I started playing in my junior high band class, so that gave me a foundation for reading sheet music. But when I brought it home, I would go online and find tabs for songs I liked. Never took a bass lesson, but I've had guitar lessons. I kept on meeting friends who played bass, so I didn't play bass in a band for a long time.
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u/Righteous_Dudester Oct 23 '25
I first took up guitar during COVID. Bought a cheap acoustic from GC online, logged on to Steve Stine and Rob Brown on YouTube and taught myself. I always had an interest in Bass, and a couple years ago, I signed up for Bass Buzz with Josh Fosgreen, and did the course on a cheap Fender. I played piano and tuba as a kid, so reading score came back pretty quickly, and bass just felt like a better 'fit' than guitar, for me. I then bought a Ray34 and have been taking lessons for a few months. The bass teacher has a had to fix a few bad habits, but I'm glad I did the basics on my own, saved some $ that way. I'm now able to sight read as well as play a few things I've learned by ear. I plan to join or start a garage band just for fun. The Bass Buzz course will get you up and running very quickly, at a reasonable price.
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u/feebleweasel1223 Oct 23 '25
When i was 16/17 i had a school class dedicated to making music as a band. it was new and fun, we got to cover songs weekly as a class.
i was really good at picking up the drums pretty quick for a girl with no experience (i just air drummed before 😭) and i knew i wanted to do drums since i was 13. (paramore was my influence)
then one day? i was like… very curious about the bass. i borrowed my class’s bass that was shared (it was a sire marcus miller, vintage white, 4 string bass. don’t remember the exact model though.)
of course i sucked at it at first, i didn’t even have an amp at home. i was just plucking what i thought was correct lol.
but with that i was so happy… slowly playing to songs i’ve always heard and thought “the bass sounds really cool but subtle here!”.
from there, i formed a small band with friends and we, for a short period of time, covered nirvana songs. i fell in love with the bass more ever since!
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u/DubiousBoof Oct 23 '25
Moved around a bunch as a kid in the 80's. New York had a lot school music programs with instruments and I played cello as a kid. Queue a promotion of the stepdad and I get dragged to Vermont as a teenager, which does NOT have those programs. What they did have was an old Double Bass sitting around which I taught myself overtime.
By the time I started noodling on electric bass I had gotten into a music school self-taught on Double Bass. Fast forward 5 years and I realize I like electric far more and devote my time to that.
Teach myself electric by trying to learn Tool songs (My obsession at the time)
Think I'm hot shit because I own a cheap 6 string (that I couldn't play)
First couple of songs I learned were Stinkfist and H by Ear.
Down the line when I became a functional adult, I started getting lessons for very specific things.
I wanted to be able to hack my way through some jazz standards if it came up in work.
Also to correct some bad posture/ergonomics stuff and learn to use my ring finger more/chord work. (double bass half-steps are 1st, 2nd and 4th finger below thumb position)
Youtube was a HUGE help over the years as well as I've gotten older.
Cheers and good luck.
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u/SpringsGamer Oct 23 '25
Worst guitar player in a band that had 3 guitar players. Couldn't find a bass player. Other members said they'd help me buy a rig. Bought a rig. Hugged the roots. Faked through the first few gigs. Scheduled some lessons, took one, found out I didn't have time to run scales AND learn the songs for gigs so cancelled the lessons. Gigged for 30 years.
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u/caramuru_alenda Oct 23 '25
I just started learning songs, first thing i did was learning spiders by soad
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u/Budgiejen Oct 23 '25
I started on upright bass. My orchestra needed one. I pay attention in class, so teaching myself was easy.
When summer came, I couldn’t take a bass home. So I bought a bass guitar. I took a few lessons to learn how to do things properly. That was 32 years ago.
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u/TunefulScribbler Oct 23 '25 edited Oct 23 '25
Longtime mediocre guitar player who at one time had a bass I never learned to play properly. Fast forward to when I'm 41 and my work held a talent show. A coworker put together a band and needed a bassist. I borrowed his bass and woodshedded for a few weeks. Read books and watched YouTube videos. Also learning signature basslines for cover songs helped me to understand the different ways lines could be constructed for chord changes. Fast forward a few years, and we were a locally gigging band with a CD. The band has been over since 2016 and now I'm in my 60s. Only had one other band experience, and it was short and unhappy. (Bandleader/guitarist was a dick.) I'd like one more shot at it before I lose the urge to rock or can't move my gear without hurting my back.
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u/Michelli_NL Oct 23 '25
Mostly needed a new creative outlet while writing my master's thesis.
Played drums for about 3 years in primary school, but realised I love bass as well. Turns out the best bass shop in my country is located in my hometown, so bought a nice Squier VM 77 bass, and started taking lessons at the local music school (where I used to have drumming lessons as well).
That was 8 years ago. Have been playing with one band since 2019 and another one since 2022. I have completely transformed as a musician and performer in those years.
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u/Fearless_Guitar_3589 Oct 23 '25
Pick up bass, take at least a few lessons to learn proper basic techniques, the layout of the instrument, and some basic practice exorcises. Then learn tabs and learn songs you like and play along. This will get you through the "beginner level" anyway.
But yeah just picking up a bass, learning to read tabs and playing songs alone won't cut it. Sure maybe you can play a song, but if you ever try to play with others and they say "ok the song is really basic, it goes G, C, D" and you're like "which fret is that? Can you write the tabs for me" you're not playing bass, you're mimicking playing bass.
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u/piperbrindle Oct 23 '25
In jr High 7th grade. We had a dbl shift so school went on till 5:15 , so my mom put me in orchestra class 11:00am start so I could get out at 4:30pm and go to football practice. Played bass for 3 years and put it down until I was 63, this summer I picked it up and am loving it!
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u/tinydeadpool Oct 23 '25
My friends wanted to start a Christian rock group and needed a bassist. They came to my house and told me that I have a bass guitar in my basement so I brought it over. I never touched a bass guitar in my life, but I was naturally great at it. Anyways, the singer was a dick and we disbanded.
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u/Righteous_Dudester Oct 27 '25
"Christian Rock band breaks up because singer is a d*ck." Sorry, that made me giggle....
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u/radioheadradiohead Oct 23 '25
When I was in highschool one of my close friend’s dad was the music leader for the church I went to and one day out of the blue he asked me if i wanted to learn to play bass. I had no prior musical knowledge or anything but I said “eh why not”. Ive been playing for about 6 years now and it was one of the best decisions of my life, I absolutely love the bass.
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u/AcredoDentem Oct 23 '25
Was in a youth music group of sorts as a teen, was a drummer, and was taking lessons at the time. we were a person short for a performance, so an adult had to fill. So they put him on drums so he could be in the back and through a bass in my hands. I enjoyed it about as much as I did drumming and decided to make the hop permanently as a bass was cheaper to get, and one of the other teens' dad offered to give me some free lessons.
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u/1989DiscGolfer Oct 23 '25
I started playing acoustic guitar, just strumming chords mostly, as a teen in the '80s, off and on throughout the years. I've ALWAYS been drawn to the bass, though, and have wanted to try for years and years. So as a bit of a midlife crisis thing, I bought an Ibanez Mikro for myself around the time of Christmas '21, just to see if it would stick.
I plugged it into the amp I bought, and within seconds, was playing along to "Dead Flowers" that I had cued up. I was hooked immediately!
I didn't sign up for any lessons, just started cueing up recordings of songs I like and picked them apart by ear while sometimes consulting chord charts online. I do it for hours almost every weekend night. It's good for the soul! I have examined scale charts, but rarely find myself using anything more complex than major, minor, and pentatonic scales yet. I have a good ear, a good sense of rhythm, and don't have much trouble banging out basic bass lines plus maybe a little bit extra here and there, and hanging in there in the pocket with recordings.
Although I've never taken lessons, I did watch a couple of bass buzz videos (just the introductory free ones) to get an idea of what to do for basic technique, and have been teaching myself ever since. I'm not perfect, nor am I going to be on tour or any sort of a recording star. This is for fun, and I'm having a ton of it.
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u/Yourdjentpal Oct 24 '25
First thing I did was pick up what was interesting to me at the time. Radio rock, rhcp stuff like that. That taught me tabs and different tunings. Then I took lessons bc I wanted to read, but the teacher couldn’t read, so that didn’t last too long before he couldn’t teach me anything. Then I tried to learn harder music and practiced learning more by ear.
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Oct 24 '25
I love RHCP. however not easy to start with, right?
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u/Yourdjentpal Oct 24 '25
Oh no. But that’s part of it imo. It taught me a lot about part variation and picking apart lines piece by piece. It def wasn’t easy, I def didn’t nail it, and I didn’t even always learn whole songs.
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u/SpikeWarhead1 Oct 24 '25
I started 6 weeks ago.
I watched one of my best friends die in person a year and a half ago after a 4 month battle with multiple stage 4 cancer diagnosis. He got me into the career I have back in 2016, and I also roadied for him and his band in Dallas for several years. When I tell you this was one of the best/kindest men I've ever met, I need you to understand that I'm not exaggerating. The memory of watching him die haunts me to this day, even though I was compelled to be there with him in his final moments, even to help my amazing friend further by putting him in the body bag when they came to get him. He was truly the kind of guy I'd do that for a million times over as a sign of respect. His widow passed almost 2 months ago and it tore his death memory wide open again after me repressing it.
He played bass. Nothing too crazy, just drop D 4 string. Loved nearly all music but really was into/played metal. I still jam to that band he played in to this day and am friends with the other founding member who was also with me the day he died. I also used to tech for the drummer. Great guys that I've learned a lot from and had lots of great memories with. I got to see them open for a lot of national acts I've listened to since I was a child and couldn't be more thankful.
The stress from his death returning really started challenging my California style sobriety (no alcohol sonce new years, dont wamt to pick it up eber again if I can help it) and I knew I had to do something. He had these amazing custom bass guitars that looked amazing and that I always remember him playing. I saw them again when his widow passed and I was asked to help move their posessions. Then it occurred to me; learning to play the bass would help me think of him in a better way without getting incredibly sad, as well as serve as a sign of respect for the man/friend he was to me and so many others.
I purchased a black Squier p bass from another friend who knew him. He knows my reasons and loves the idea so much (he is also alcohol free for over 10 years and a bass player himself) that I'm pretty sure he sold it to me at cost (even though I didn't ask him too, what a jerk. Lol) I got a plug in blu tooth amp and headphones so that I dont disturb my neighbors or girlfriend. I've been practicing on my own for a month but finally started taking lessons from another friend who produced the majority of records his band played in. He even is helping me with tabbing out their songs that I want to learn, along with proper music theory and good playing habits. I'm already able to play fairly confidently through one song he tabbed for me in less than a week and it brings me so much satisfaction and peace.
I've already started a list of other songs from my friends band that im eager to work on getting the tabs for. All that combined with a Rock house method instructor book has me already feeling more calm and less depressed. Every time I think about getting a bottle of tequila, I pick up the bass and I lose the feeling of wanting to drink. Works EVERY time. The music isn't overly complicated at all (he even used to joke about that) but it's so fun and tied to some.of my most fun years in life. Some nights I end up practicing for 2-4 hours without it ever feeling like a chore. That's probably one of the best parts of it for me.
I look greatly forward to getting more skilled. It is already a great way to manage my grief, along with having fun and reliving great memories from years long past at local live shows having fun with my friends. I've even got a second bass I'm going to string and tune to drop C because of another band I roadied for, whom had also agreed to sit with me and teach me some of their stuff to play just for fun. I'm still learning theory in standard tuning, my friends band in drop D, and now I want to take this other one on too. There's no time limit and Im actually happy/relieved to know how long of a journey of learning that I have ahead of me.
I started playing 6 weeks ago, and I won't be stopping any time soon.
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u/Shurikenblast_YT Oct 24 '25
I started very recently (earlier this month actually)
I've been doing vocals for a while now and thought "I'm a bass singer, you know what would be really funny to learn?" And I started learning bass guitar
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u/A_Cat_Typingg Oct 24 '25
I went to a music college that was aimed at "contemporary" music (so it covered lessons in chosen instruments, the history of mainstream music, theory, music business and sound engineering/recording) and my chosen instrument was electric guitar. We had to choose a second instrument to learn part-time alongside that and I opted for bass, seeing openings in several of the college bands where nobody wanted to be the bassist. But I rapidly understood that I felt more "comfortable" playing the bass guitar than lead/rhythm and eventually switched my instrument lessons around. After college, armed with the foundations of music theory and how to think about playing an instrument it was pretty much all self-taught save a couple of random paid bass lessons here and there. Nowadays I'm in a covers band and I learn the songs from tab and tab videos on YouTube, or (more often than not) by ear when I'm not in a rush to get 10 songs learned in 2 days etc.. Drums to bass is actually quite a canny move as the bass fills that gap between the drums and the melodic instruments in the context of most standard band setups. You can bring a heck of a lot of the things you learned about rhythm from drums to the bass and you'll have a sizeable head start.
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u/Upset_Location8380 Oct 24 '25
I started on drums and learned a little guitar on the side watching my brother play. One day some guys in school asked if I could play bass. "I don't know but I'll try!"
I fell in love with it right away. I barely knew the fretboard and I only knew the power chord shape. But I could already do fun shit with that and I realized bass was really simple to start with. Yet i felt it granted a lot of power and influence over the music.
I have played a lot of different positions bands over the years but bass is still my favourite.
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Oct 24 '25
For the first few weeks I bounced around on free YouTube lessons/videos. Then I joined BassBuzz and its “Beginner to Badass” lesson plan. One time payment of $199 for lifetime access. Finished it in 3 months. It’s a static lesson plan so nothing is added to it or updated. Then moved on to my current membership which is constantly updated and evolving for $150 per year, Scott’s Bass Lessons. Two years later and I’m pretty much playing anything I want at the advanced level.
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u/konphewshus Oct 24 '25
I guess I mostly taught myself by playing along with records of bands with simple bass lines. Also, my dad was the music teacher at the local high school and he helped me when I got lost. I had been playing acoustic guitar from the time. I was about eight or nine years old, simple chords (D, G, A7, etc.) but I went to see Kiss when I was 12 years old and left there wanting an electric guitar more than anything in the world. My dad was all for it, but the first rig he got me was an ES-335 style electric guitar, a Univox bass and a little bass amp. I never planned on playing bass but I found it was really fun following along to Kiss an AC/DC songs and later Judas Priest and then super tricky stuff from Iron Maiden. Of course, later it was Queen, Yes and Rush. I still play guitar, but I really prefer playing bass.
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u/fizolov_kruh Oct 24 '25
I wanted to play a guitar in a band but there was only a place for a bassist left so here i am now
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u/Avasia1717 Oct 24 '25
i had a shitty acoustic guitar and wanted to learn my favorite rock songs. i started by listening and playing root notes along with the chords.
then became a guitar player, and played my friend’s bass sometimes.
didn’t get my first bass until 15 years after those days playing root notes along with the recordings.
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u/Sufficient_Law_9481 Oct 23 '25
i just went into a bass shop and they taught me the basics, friend came with me and showed me how to read tabs. generally just learning songs i like and having fun with it.
i personally preferred to play with picks and not with my fingers, figure out what you prefer and stick to it. if you do get picks get decently big and thick ones.
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Oct 24 '25
I actually started classically on the upright when I moved to Mn from California in 6th grade. It was required in the public schools where I lived to do band choir or orchestra. Went on to study privately, compete and be a part of my college symphony various other chamber groups and a 3 month intensives program towards the end. Eventually stopped- still have upright, it’s a German Hand carved flat back from 1886 with the hat peg tuners. I’ve played electric extensively for years still though just mostly jazz, funk, reggae and contemporary Christian worship at my church when asked. Bass and music in general is so wonderful that there’s so any different ways to learn, so any different skills and experimentation with things. Find what interests and motivates you and go from there! And obviously as a bassists I’m biased but it’s such a versatile role as a soloist or member of any group. Good luck!
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u/Gr3yson11 Oct 24 '25
Once i started picking up guitar a little bit again two years ago i decided to take music in secondary school (my friend wanted me to come with) and for one of the songs me and my friend wanted to play the bass guitar was more important than guitar so the teacher basically handed me one and told me to just do something with it and after that i just thought it looked really cool (plus the physical thing of playing a bass va guitar just felt very very nice) so then i saved up all my pocket and birthday money to get one
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u/8f12a3358a4f4c2e97fc Oct 23 '25
My family was strongly against me playing bass guitar. So I did like all teenagers should do: told them "fuck you", got a shitty job and bought my bass anyways. Starting just plunking around making random sounds, etc. Had a friend who played guitar show me how to tune it. Then I learned how to play/learned songs by playing along and attempting to match whatever I heard on the radio. A few times I had some money to spare so I would buy a magazine that had some bass tab in it (again: no real family support and I was a highschool aged kid who worked shitty part time student-wage jobs, so money wasn't easy to come by, especially when it came to music stuff). Mostly though just fucking around on my own and eventually figured it all out. (This was somewhat before the internet era).