How to Play Swing Music on Bass in Ab

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 A flat major on the upright, and we're going to go through, show you how to walk through the scale, and we're going to show you the bebop scale which is just adding one extra note to make it an even note scale. And we'll show you the pattern how it's written out on paper, so you can see it visually, and first of all we'll show you how to find your actual frets 'cause you notice there's no frets on the bass, and it's easy, it's just finding octaves. You can hear the difference between this and this, right? In tune, out of tune, in tune... and we'll use this to find our first four notes. And usually just these first four notes on the fingering, or on the fretboard, we can play through this entire scale as we can all the scales, and I encourage you to go through all twelve keys and once you do that, you'll have this part of the bass down pat, so you should really go through that, and we'll get our minor chords out of here. We have B flat minor, and E flat seven, are both derived using the same scale, so you'll learn in just this one scale, you'll learn three scales all in one, with one pattern, and you'll be able to move around and start walking some double bass."