Beginners’ Lesson

After a few months focusing on muting, let’s head the other way and think more about how hand position influences note length. We can do this by exploring some more ideas relating to playing more than one string at once.

Once again, we’re in an expanded headspace that seems at odds with ‘beginner’ playing, but this worry stems from the application of the bass in pop music, rather than a built-in obstacle to learning our instrument. On guitar, you start with chords because single notes are considered too fiddly: On bass, we start with single notes because chords are considered too difficult.

The truth is, there are ‘beginner’ ways to approach all of these, and as always we’re going to be trying to connect our decades of music listening and exposure to sounds to our development as bass technicians. Bass has a long and beautiful history as a chordal instrument, from the technically extravagant brilliance of Stanley Clarke, and Colin Hodgkinson, to the more subtle use by Paul Brindley of the Sundays, or