Sometimes you will feel stuck when thinking about picking up your bass. You won't know what to play, you'll feel frustrated and lacking in motivation.
Don't worry, it happens to all of us and is totally normal. The key is to get inspired again! Hopefully this lesson will help you.
Make sure to scroll through this blog post to download all the free backing tracks and, especially, one of my favourite bass exercises ever.
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Premium Bass Guitar Courses
There are YEARS worth of practice material in these courses, all for a very reasonable one off price.
10 Inspirational Bass Practice Tips
1. Groove With Just the Root
Use a drum loop and focus purely on time, feel, note length, ghost notes, and space—no pressure to be clever, just groove.
Use this swing beat to make up some grooves. Pick a simple one octave scale and just use the roots.
2. Pick One Mode or Scale and Create
Choose Dorian, Mixolydian, or Minor Pentatonic and stick with it. Create grooves, fills, or short solos from just that sound. My Music Theory For Bass Players course contains pretty much every bass scale and mode shape you'll ever need (and what to do with them...).
3. Do a Hand Coordination Workout
Practice 16th-note endurance, ghost note patterns, string skipping, or shifting grooves. Work both hands together with groove in mind.
This is one of my most used bass exercises over thirty plus years of playing:
4. Improvise Over a Chord Progression
Pick something simple like CMaj7 | Dm7 | Fmaj7 | G7 | and explore how arpeggios, scales, and phrasing connect. Make it sound like music.
This lesson goes through this in much more detail but if you haven't got time to view it, here's the backing track:
5. Play One Groove in Different Keys
Take a riff or bass line you love and play it across all 12 keys. It builds fretboard fluency, control, and confidence. For more on finding notes on the bass and some songs to play:
- How To Find Any Note On The Bass Guitar
- Easy Songs For Bass Players!
- What to learn to become a good bass player (scroll down for a huge list of songs with great bass lines).
6. Learn a Melody on Bass
Pick a vocal line, horn lick, or guitar riff and learn it on bass. It improves phrasing, ear training, and melodic awareness.
7. Jam Over a Drone
Pick a drone (C is a great one) and explore different modes. This builds confidence in modal sounds and helps your soloing ideas.
- Download 12 free drones here, or just the C drone used in the lesson:
8. Make Up a Bass Line From a Drum Beat
Start with a loop and write a groove to fit it. Focus on locking in, reacting to rhythm, and being creative with your note choices.
Here's the drum beat I used in the lesson:
9. Learns lots of bass lines
Return to the roots: pick a bar or two from Jamerson, Duck Dunn, or Peter Hook. Learn it, loop it, then reshape it into your own voice.
10. Have a plan
Write down your bass goals and what you want to achieve with your music. This will focus you. Then figure out how much time you have to practice and schedule that time. Stick to it and you will improve.
Bass Guitar Practice Resources
- Lessons about how to practice
- From Beginner To Bassist has a big section on practice along with some sample practice routines to follow exact steps in a practice session.
- The Bass Guitar Practice Journal: Plan Your Way to Musical Mastery
Get your practice habits and techniques sorted and you can be the bass player you've always wanted to be.