Jazz is a rich art form that holds many treasures for bass players.
Even you come from a pop or rock background, you can learn so much from reading charts and learning how to make up walking bass lines, including:
- How to recognise and interpret chord symbols
- Improvising
- Using your ear
- Different parts of the bass fretboard
- Relying on your own sense of timing
- Swing rhythms
You'll learn all that in this bass tutorial.
Jazz Bass
It's essential that you have a few basics down when reading charts and learning jazz bass.
On thing is arpeggios and how they are formed by harmonising a major scale. The following lessons will help in these areas:
Bass Guitar Music Theory: The 7 Arpeggios From C Major
Harmonising The Natural Minor Scale: Play Bass Lines, Chords & Solos!
An Amazing Bass Technique Exercise You WILL Actually Use
Having a good sense of time is also important. There's a metronome exercise where you place the beats on two and four (the 'backbeat'). That's great for working on your swing. This lesson goes into more detail:
7 Metronome Exercises For Bass Guitar To Work On Your Timing And Groove
Make sure you sign up to my newsletter (below) or subscribe to my YouTube channel. I'm going to be doing more lessons on jazz standards and reading chord charts.
I have hundreds of free lessons already so have a search for something you can learn this week!
