How to Play Swing Music on Bass in G

Series Summary

The bass has a bit of a chip on its shoulder. Many people think that the least talented musician in a band is assigned to the bass. But fewer strings does not necessarily translate into less creative impact. While much of pop music has relatively simple bass lines, even the most basic of these lines are crucial to creating a solid rhythm section. In more progressive forms of rock music as well as in jazz, the bass maintains the timekeeping function while adding a subtlety and depth to a band’s sound nearly impossible to achieve with the more intrusive lead instruments. In funk and hip hop, the bass steps up to center stage, pounding home dancefloor rhythms. And in reggae the bass takes over, with the guitar keeping the beat as expansive bass runs dance all around it.

In this free video series, watch as jazz artist Ryan Larson teaches basic swing progressions on an upright bass. Learn how to find the frets and chart the scales. Get tips on simple bass progressions and melodic patterns. With these easy online upright bass lessons, you are sure to improve your playing thanks to the experts at Expert Village.

Video Transcript

"So today we're going to go over the upright bass, first thing I'm going to do is show you how to do get your first four frets. And once you tune it, all you have to do is find the octave and we'll show you how to do it, it's a very easy process. And you can mark it off at home with tape, or whatever you like to do, you don't want to ruin your bass now. And then we're going to show you how to walk through this G major scale. So we'll go through and show you some bebop notes you can walk through, and play some extra notes outside of the scale, we're really show you the scale so you can get it under your fingers, and we'll show you the correct fingering to use and how to keep your hands safe from tendinitis and other worries of the bass. And we'll go through and analyze this one scale G major, and we get two other scales that are derived out of it. You have A minor, and you have D seven, and both of them utilize the exact same scale pattern, and if you click on the link at the top of the screen, you'll actually get the help sheet, or the cheat sheet that we have for you to print out, and you can print out and look at it and it has E major analyzed on the bass. So you can go through and start having some fun with our day-to-day lesson plan."