How to Position the Left Hand for Bass Guitar

Video Transcript

"OK, well, now we know some open strings, but those are not the only notes we're confined to on the bass. We can play any note in music on the bass guitar, at least in a few octaves. So, to get the rest of the notes we're going to have to play up on the fret board, or the finger board. What you want to do first is make a "C" with your hand, like so, your left hand, your melody hand, you're going to turn that over, you're going to put your thumb facing up, behind the neck, and these fingers should stay arched above the strings. Try to keep it narrow, we're going to be playing in open position, or our first position, so try to keep yourself between the first and the second fret with your thumb. This way when we play notes, our thumb will stay in place, we'll be applying pressure behind each fret, but the important thing is our hand has a good structure so we can reach any notes that we need to play."