The Best Way to Learn Bass

Welcome to the bass highway.

I’m here to tell you that there is, in fact, one sure fire way to get farther down this road of bass progress.

All us bassists are out here, dealing with traffic, car trouble, bad drivers, all in the quest to get to Good Bassist City – that legendary place where the streets are paved with groove, the guitarists are never too loud, and we can play the bass the way we always wanted to.

But, as Tenacious D so eloquently said:

The road is f*&%#’n hard, it’s also really f*&%#’n tough.

It’s hard if you feel like you’re dragging ass in the slow lane.

It’s also really f*&%#’n tough watching people pass you, staring at tail lights, feeling like Good Bassist City isn’t getting any closer.

Fortunately for you, there is…

One Thing that will instantly drag you out of the slow lane and catapult you down the road. 

One Thing that will keep your twin tanks of motivation and focus filled to the brim.

One Thing that will… do fancy car things like Vin Diesel does in Fast and Furious… only, with bass. (I know nothing about cars, but I still like this analogy, alright?)

The One Thing has nothing to do with scales, or fingering exercises or sweet new gear from sweet new companies.  

The one ultimate way to fast track your bass progress is:

Play music with other people.

Play music.

With other people.

There are all kinds of obstacles on this bass highway – popped tires, aimless side streets, drained motivation – and on your own, there’s a chance you’ll stall, get stuck, or even have a complete breakdown.

In this article, I’ll show you how playing music with other humans will help you blast straight through the 8 most common obstacles to being a solid bassist with a power and focus that is near-impossible to achieve on your own.

How does it do that? First, it solves the eternal question:

#1What to Practice

There are a million billion things to practice to get better at the bass.

The internet has 1 million billion voices all desperately pitching their latest hack, trick, pro tip, system, easy method, one best thing (oops.  guilty), to get better right now.

How do you know what to do?  In what order?  

Play Music With Other People

If you’re playing music with other people, the thing that you need to practice is the thing that will help you survive the next jam/rehearsal/worship service/gig. It’s the thing that will make the band sound better.

It’s the new songs that just got added to the set.

Playing music with other people will bring with it a constant string of new material to work on and new landmarks to work towards: new songs, gigs, ideas, etc.  

Also, I notice that once I’ve been presented with a new scenario, a new group, a new set of songs, or whatever – I find new things in my playing that need attention.

For example, I didn’t know how much work my reggae bass playing needed until I was on stage and my friends wanted to play reggae. Big blind spot here. That led (after a rather sad reggae jam) to a deep dive into Family Man’s work with Bob Marley, and progress was made. I knew a clear thing to dive into and work on.

The internet can absolutely provide new things that will show you what needs attention. But it can provide too many new things.

The most common scenario here is the need to really iron out an 8-15 song set in 4-6 weeks. Very doable, and a great way to accelerate the practice and bass progress.

You know what to practice. You’re flying down the highway. But what’s this? Dammit! The tank’s on E. You’re low on motivation.

How to move forward when there’s no…

#2Motivation to Play

If all of your bass playing is on your own, it can be very easy to lose motivation.  Why practice when there are so many other things that need to be done, so many other people demanding attention and energy.  Also, video games.

Consider these to be well lit, comfortable, safe looking exits leading you from the rigors of the bass highway.

How do you stay on track?  How do you find the motivational fuel to keep on truckin’?

Play Music With Other People

• Your band needs you.  
• You don’t want to mess up on stage.
• You’d like to pull off that new and difficult thing for the new and difficult song you learned.
• You don’t want to train-wreck at the next gig.
• You want the world to behold your bass brilliance.

These are merely some of the very powerful and fast-acting motivational forces that playing with other people summons.

When other people are counting on you and there’s a clear goal and a clear date-for-completion, practicing becomes essential and it gets done!

We need reasons to play.

We need opportunities for glory and spotlights (behind the guitarist and lead singer, of course) to entice us to practice.

We need potentially embarrassing and shame-inducing fear to light the fire of effort under our asses!!

Some people don’t need the extra elements of glory or fear to practice. Some people are deeply self-motivated. That’s great for those people.

But for me (and maybe some other folks too) there needs to be a deadline and a potential reward/consequence to get me motivated and focused.  

But… having reasons and motivation to play and practice won’t instantly translate to anything if you don’t have the time.

Luckily, playing music with other people does a great job of eliminating the obstacle of…

#3Making the Time

If you are alive right now, reading this, you probably have a busy schedule. 

Making room on a schedule for things is a crusade only of the brave.

You’ll be able to make room for big family events, friends coming into town, kids sporting events, school things, team things, work things – lots of things in life have the power to jam themselves into the schedule.

Practicing, by yourself, at home for no reason other than the noble quest to proceed toward Good Bassist City?

That’s the first thing that usually goes up on the chopping block when scheduling push comes to scheduling shove.

However!

If you want to get music time respected on a calendar, there’s one surefire way to do it:

Play Music With Other People

If you have a rehearsal? Well, hot damn. Rehearsals get onto calendars. There’s something about the power of the group – the power of other people’s expectations and schedules all combining at one sacred time – that allows music time with other humans to make it into the schedule.

My time? My time gets no respect. But a rehearsal? Damn, but that sounds serious. That gets respect.

Having time to play and the material and motivation to practice is great. But if you’re sitting there spinning your wheels, hashing out the same ‘ol stuff all the time, there will be no forward progress.

You still need to:

#4Expand Your Bass Horizons

We all are limited by the borders of our own experience.

You don’t even know what you don’t know… can you dig it?

You can’t get any further down the road if you’ve already done all the things you know how to do to move forward.  

If you want to keep moving toward Good Bassist City on this great bass highway, you’ll need more experience than just what you, alone, bring to the table.

There’s a surefire way to experience the great wide wonder of the bass player landscape.

Play Music With Other People

Sure, the internet is filled with a million billion things that I don’t know but, once again, when I’m facing such a vast mountain of unknowable things, I don’t know where to start.

When I play something and someone says “hey, you ever listen to this bassist?” and I have no idea what they’re talking about, it’s an immediate connection of something I don’t know, to something I just did. It’s a direct expansion of my horizon based on my real-time life.  

There’s a difference when someone is bringing up a specific reference or musical idea in a specific situation vs looking for ‘best general, hyped-up bass tips’ from an algorithmically driven machine (um… even if that is how you found this article).

This works for people who are interested in playing lots of styles, but it’s also true for people who are determined to only play one style.

If you only want to play [your favorite genre here] music, that’s fine. As soon as you join up with a group of people to play that, I guarantee you’ll be exposed to new bands, new ideas and new sounds in that [favorite genre] world. The wider your experience, the more you can bring to the table, and the better you will be as a bassist.

I just played a gig at my kid’s school and I had to learn a heap of songs.

One of the songs was Faith by George Michael.

That’s a killer bass line!! I had no idea. I would never have listened to that song and spent time working out the bass line if I hadn’t been in a new group of people with very different tastes. I just inched on down the bass highway thanks to George Michael.

Thanks, George Michael.

With your bass horizon expanded, your mind opened and the power of the bass universe at your fingertips, there should be no stopping your bass progress, right?

Alack! Just as the way seems clear, that damned internal doubt and insecurity comes creeping in to ruin everything. If only there were some way to continue this glorious bass progress and:

#5Destroy The Doubt

No matter how much practicing you do, no matter how much motivation you have, no matter how much time you devote, no matter how open you are to new sounds and new input, the seed of doubt will still find a way to sprout and grow.

Are you really a bassist?

Are you good enough to call yourself a bassist? Do you have the cred??

There is one thing you can do that is proven to be the most effective for destroying doubt and establishing your internal and external identity as a real, bona fide bassist:

Play Music With Other People

If you have a bass and play bass with people, and other people see you play bass, you are really a bassist. The visual, physical, social aspect of playing with other humans makes this question so much easier to answer, and will destroy that bassist-identity doubt.

Overcoming the ‘am-I-a-bassist’ doubt can be trickier if you have to explain “well I only practice by myself, but I rip it up when I’m playing in my room alone to recordings”.

I do not cast shade upon solo-playing and practice! But the clear declaration of bassist-ness can be a lot easier and clearer when you have a real-human-music-making application to back up your bass playing claims.

How does destroying the doubt make you a better bassist, you ask?

A good bassist is someone who plays with confidence and authority. Tentative, insecure playing is the mark of a beginner, or someone still plagued by bassist-doubt.

If you could re-focus the part of your brain that’s worrying you’re: 

not good enough

not a real bassist

shouldn’t be in the room

And shift it to bass playing energies… you’d be a much better player and (arguably more important?) a happier person.

With a secure bassist identity, you should be soaring down the highway, unhindered by doubt, and with everything you need to make it to G.B.C.

However.

Musicians, much like wild animals, are always hungry.

Also, much like wild animals, they can sense fear.

You can’t show up to Good Bassist City terrified to make a wrong move. You need confidence to walk those groove-strewn streets.

You need to learn to:

#6Embrace the Mistakes

You’re going to mess up.

The fear of making a mistake in rehearsal, in the jam session or on the stage is real and powerful, and will keep you from reaching Good Bassist City.

But how can you overcome this fear and learn the ultimate bassist secret: that there are no perfect performances, only perfect recoveries?

Play Music With Other People

Mistakes, flubs, clams, they’re a permanent feature of all human-made music.

Every performance has a thing, a moment that the performer would change and improve if they could.

I love listening to old recordings live to tape, because there are flubs and mistakes all over the place.

Does it matter?

Nope.  Because the music was good, and the recovery was perfect.

It’s impossible to move from a place of fearing the mistakes, to a place of calmly recovering from mistakes (and getting right along with the song) if you’re not out in a situation where the show must go on.

This is a hurdle that can only be hurdled when you’ve been on the bandstand and had to keep a straight face and cool head after playing the exact wrong part at the exact wrong time.

This, I think, more than anything, is what defines a great player. 

So, step up and tackle those mistakes in a big bass-y bear hug, and love them, and move on, and in doing so you’ll become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

Musical mistakes are one fear to be conquered. 

But what about all the other ones?

What about the recurring anxiety dreams (that I still absolutely get) before a gig about not having the right gear and forgetting to turn the amp on?

How will you ever get further down that bass highway if you can’t:

#7Conquer the Fears

Fear, as they say, is the mind bass playing progress killer.

A lot of folks will never step out into the world of music with other people because it can be, admittedly, scary stuff.

Performing can be terrifying.

Other people can be uncomfortable.

Making mistakes can be embarrassing.

Why, for the love of all things good and bass-y, would you voluntarily go do a terrifying, uncomfortable, embarrassing thing???

Hard truth warning:

And the way to jump into this bass-improvement crucible?

Play Music With Other People

If you are afraid of what playing music with other people in the real world will be like, I fully understand. I still get scared of certain gigs, and I’ve made this my damned profession. I even called another bassist – a consummate pro and seasoned veteran – to try and give him a gig I was particularly worried about.

He wouldn’t take the gig. He told me “They asked you to do it, for whatever reason. That means they want you. Just go, and play music.” 

So I did.

And I practiced my ass off, and I did just fine. I didn’t blow anyone’s mind, but I did the job, and it felt so damn good.

Conversely…

I once took a jazz gig with a drummer friend after years of not playing jazz. My friend was real good. The piano player was real, real good. I was… rusty. I struggled and scuffled through the whole set. I didn’t do just fine. But I didn’t die. I didn’t get called back, but I did know exactly what things needed work, needed practice and needed attention if I was ever going to put my jazz hat back on again.

Ego:  – 1,000

XP:  +200,000

The nerves and the doubts and the fears are very real, but they are also temporary. The experience that you pick up from these times where you’re out on a limb and pushing yourself in musical ways that you cannot do on your own will be with you forever.  

Experience is what makes a Good Bassist. That feeling of knowing you can handle the situation only comes after plenty of times of having no idea if you can handle the situation. Or being out there, failing, and realizing that you don’t die, and you come back wiser and stronger.

Bass playing improvement will only happen when you say yes to the situation and then put in the work.

The more musical scenarios you put yourself into, the more your perspective will mellow from…

Oh s*#!, this is the most important moment in musical history, don’t f*#% it up or you will literally die!

…to: 

Ok, gotta prepare, do my best, stay focused, and play some music, and hope to god the singer remembers when to come in after the guitar solo.

It’s the perspective of a confident, experienced bassist, and that is the prerequisite vibe if you want to get into Good Bassist City.

The secrets and reasons are all in your grasp.

There is nothing that can stop you now.

Unless, of course, you just hate the bass highway. 

Unless you just hate having to drive on this crap road, with your crap car, while all these crap drivers scream by you.

There’s no way to stay on the road or move forward if you can’t:

#8Have A Good Time

Driving can suck.

Getting stuck in traffic is the 4th circle of hell.

If you’re in a shitty car with no AC, no radio, no connection for your phone and it’s hot, and it’s stop and go, bumper to bumper cars?

It’s terrible.

If you’re having a terrible time on the bass highway, there’s no hope for progress.

The instinct (and rightly so) is to get the hell off of this terrible, excruciating road.

But!

If you were having a great time? If there was serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins and all sorts of mind-altering, maddeningly-addictive and perfectly naturally produced chemicals for your brain and body to enjoy when you were on that bass highway?

Well, then you’d stay on it.

You’d probably, by golly, end up at Good Bassist City with an ear to ear smile.

So how do you find the joy in bass playing? How can you turn the shitty-car, traffic-y drudgery of the bass highway into an ever-escalating series of euphoric, glorious times?

Play Music With Other People

If you’re stuck in traffic, but you’re stuck in traffic with cool people that you enjoy, who can suffer with you, it’s not as bad.

If you’re stuck in a s*!#@y car with no AC, no radio, no connection for your phone and it’s hot, you can still enjoy the shared misery if there are groovy people in the car with you.

And when you finish a song and someone claps? Someone cheers? It’s an incredible feeling. Turn that someone into a full room of someones, and the feeling you get is magnified by approximately (don’t worry, I’m a fully licensed basscientist) 1 billion.

Even if you’re just dinking around, playing music with friends in a garage – it can be the most absolutely enjoyable thing in the world.

I would never have stuck with the bass if I hadn’t been in bands and gone out and played gigs with my friends. I loved music, but the thing that solidified music in my life was being able to play with my friends, perform for my friends, and weave that joy into my life.

Doing fun things is fun, and it keeps you moving forward.

Because, you know, fun.

As long as you pay attention to who you’re playing music with (don’t take no bad vibes or guff out there!), you too can experience this glorious sensation.

It will elevate your playing, and blast you forward on that potentially frustrating bass highway. It will keep you moving, unstoppable, on your quest to your inevitable and ultimate destination: