Love your channel and your advice! Being an active semi-pro bass player for 40+ years and still playing all the time, mostly in the rock genre, in long time bands, subbing, studio, and jams my advice for getting and keeping the gig is 1) learn to lock with the drummer from the first downbeat; 2) be a good hang - you spend a lot of time NOT playing and no one wants to spend that time with an a**hole; 3) use your ears and make everyone else sound great; 4) be on time to the gig! 5) and most importantly HAVE FUN and bring joy to your fellow musicians and the audience.
You are beyond brilliant. Great advice to all players- at 73 y/o I still have musicians show up late, not knowing their music, not having the basics you just mentioned- and wonder why they can’t get work. You are a master bassist and pro we can all learn from regardless of age. Thank you sharing your knowledge! ❤
I'm a little surprised you didn't mention intervals - the musician's alphabet. Having a good grasp of intervals and their shapes on the fretboard makes everything else a little easier to pick up on. Guessing that will be its own lesson soon enough. Good work, as usual.
dude i have grade 6 music theory, and this still helped. just keeping it simple makes it a lot easier to understand, and i'll probably come back to this video as a refresher in the future.
I won't lie, explaining music theory, to me at least, kind of goes over my head a bit. Something that's been helping me with bass and bass VI is finger placement and shape/patterns, makes a world of a difference for me and helps give me something to not only practices everyday but somewhere to start and move forward. I was curious as to wether or not you might have a lesson for something like that to help us not so musically inclined people
Great stuff. When I started out learning notes on fretboard I'd draw out the neck with frets on paper and fill in the notes. Doing from memory helped me learn when I picked up the actual bass
I've been a guitar player for 15 years now but I'm about 3 years into taking bass seriously and not just seeing it as a guitarist playing a bass. Man, something about bass just gets me, I fucking love the instrument. And last year I invested in a high quality Ibanez 5 string and it was a great purchase.
👏👏👏 Thanks Charles. I've been playing for years bass and guitar and every time I check out one of your teachings I always take something from it. Love what your doing brother 👊
Excellent advice. I’m already doing this. I am a flutist/saxophonist and just started playing the bass, it’s a lot harder than my regular instruments But, I’m loving it. You are a fantastic teacher…….
Yesterday i had an aha moment doing blues micro licks on acoustic guitar. This adds right on top of that. One of the most helpful videos i've seen in a long time. The timing helps too though. Thanks man!!
Thank you, Charles. This is great stuff and immediately very helpful. Sharing your knowledge and skill via this free platform is remarkable and I know there are many who greatly appreciate your time and effort.
I strongly feel (in terms of learning the fingerboard) that it’s best to learn where the natural notes are first, so the C Major scale and A minor scale, and then learn about how to name the other notes while learning the circle of fifths.
I just picked up bass not even 4 days ago as my very first instrument. This video is so helpful! Thank you so much! I cant wait to learn all this music theroy and actually get good at understanding music down to it roots as a bass player! Thank you so much!
Thanks for putting up the chart with the keys on they bass. I've been playing music for over a decade and never learned proper theory, and this videos makes me want to at least memories the keys/ popular chords.
Awesome lesson as always! My only suggestion is regarding the background music, my preference would be no background music at all during the explanations but if you really want to have music, then keep it very simplistic and soft. Having busy background music competing for attention makes it harder focus and absorb what you are saying. Especially since these lessons (so far) have been geared more towards beginners who might be hearing this info for the first time. When using audio examples for demonstration purposes, maybe cut the background music entirely in between examples so people can keep the previous example in their head when going into the next example for comparison, like when you did the swing vs straight beats. You could insert a small video clip of slap/tap/shredding at the intro (and outro?) for those who find this channel before your main channel, to demonstrate that you really know your stuff. Anyways, just my two cents. 😉
Agreed... Great content. The background music was / is a distraction. I'm hard of hearing and a little older :) so no background music would be appreciated.
perfect advice for me, im a wanna be punk preformer and right now im only in jazz bands. (I want to form a punk band so baddd) i am a singer/song writer and its very helpful to have this video to always come back too. THANK UUU
Everytime I watch one your videos I hear the call of the bass and I want to go and practise... Thanks a lot for all your precious and inspiring advices! 👍
Im so happy you're doing this channel, awesome.this video is exactly where I'm at so it was like you were talking directly to me lol nice one Charles you are awesome
He referenced that joke because Jason neesteads bass parts for Metallica’s greatest album justice for all his whole bass parts for every part of that album was turned down by drummer Lars Ulrich
THIS GUY HAS POTENTIAL TO BE A GREAT ONLINE BASS GUITAR TEACHER! He just jumped a lot of parts. IT WAS LIKE TELLING ME THE PLAY FOR A BASKETBALL TEAM BUT NOT TEACHING HOW TO DRIBBLE, PASS, OR SHOOT THE BALL. I KNOW HE IS EXPERIMENTING WITH THIS RU-vid THING; BUT, IT IS TIME FIR HIM TO FINE TUNE THE CHANNEL SO HE CAN BUILD HIS TOP SELLING ONLINE COURSES!
@@XRandomuser1792X playing alot and listening a lot develops this skill. I know very little to nothing about music theory, but I can easily find a song or notes by ear and jamming with people easily
I think some more in-depth music theory is needed with a part 2 video where you explain how to learn your fretboard notes more easily. Also A PDF FILE SHOWING WHERE THE ACTUAL NOTES ARE FOR EACH KEY SCALE HELPS STUDENTS SEE WHERE THEY SHOULD FOCUS!
YA GOT TO GIVE THEM SOMETHING FREE. A free in-depth e-book showing where the notes are on the fretboard and where the notes are for each key in a scale for all seven scales will boost your channel. THIS HELPS A LOT VERSUS JUST SHOWING VIDEO DEMONSTRATIONS WITH TAB. IT CAN CONFUSE PEOPLE.
I learned the notes really fast by looking at the strings starting at 0 and i realized that it goes in alphabetical order but the sharp always comes after the actual letter and the flat always comes before the actual letter
That feeling when you thought you wanted to be a car mechanic, then studied aerodynamics and learned that what you really want to be is an Aerospace Engineer. Priceless.
came here after watching ton of wooten videos, i gotta say, you should have the balance between playing the groove and thr rythm of whatever note in whatever key, and the same time, knowing where you are in the fretboard
3:22 I always imagine chords as stacks of thirds. From there I can change some of the thirds to seconds or fourth to create chord variations like sus4 or 6th chords.
Man, there are so many complaints in the comments. Some people are just ungrateful, I guess. 😔 Anyway, thank you for the video, Charles. This is good information that will help musicians who are serious about learning their instruments. 🙂
Hey Charles, I saw the video you dropped on here about tapping, and it was really just basics. I'm wondering does your patreon have more advanced stuff? I want to get better at tapping, but a lot of stuff on yt is just for complete beginners.
Yes, if you sign up you'll get access to my full beginner tapping course which actually gets fairly challenging towards the end, as well as an intermediate lesson and practice videos for all my songs which obviously includes some crazy tapping!!
Frankly I wouldn't get too hung up on learning the note names. The relative pitch positions are far more important. You need to know how to play a root, 5th or 3rd from the key note. And some standard riff patterns. Once you have those patterns under your fingers you can easily adjust to a different key, rather than laboriously thinking for each note "oh, that was a C in that key so now it must be a D in the new one"....
it would be nice if people rotate the bass 180° and display the image, this puts the E string at the bottom so when you look at the image, you can look "down" at your bass and look up at the sheet, making it a lot easier to read and play. instead of making you transpose the image in your head. no one every does it. "this is what i know" ya, we know that you can play lol.
Every time i see a video like this i know i will never be any good its like listening to someone speak in another language. So many great bassists on youtube so i know its me.
Don't let the jargon discourage you. Nobody in any good bands actually talks about keys or major/minor or any of that stuff. A painter knows what color of paint they want to use next and where, even if it doesn't look great until it's done. They don't have to name the ratio to the nearest color or the RGB value or any of the technical stuff. That's for the audience to map out if they so choose. Same with music. If someone else wants to analyze why I went from this note to that note, have fun. I'm playing what I think sounds good and I don't give a damn if it's "incorrect"
3:14 Hey Jude definitely doesn't use this progression (I, V, VI-, IV). It's, instead: I, V, V7, I, which, in the key of C, is: C, G, G7, C. The song key is actually F and its first four chords are F, C, C7, F. Right?
I'd say yes, because it helps you understand songs and also to communicate with others. But you can do it a small bit at a time. Just keep an open mind.
@@proileri well, 7 months later, and i have attended 12 of 14 hours now on a semester for music theory and modes, and you were very right, music theory is like getting keys to my brain! Now i can use my ears, aswell as plan ahead because i know where the notes are and which ones goes together wich each other, im not super trained yet on it, but i at least have a lot more knowledge now. Circle of fitfh, shapes, modes, scales. I thought i hated studying but i actually like it 😀
Hey Charles, I would still love me to know the best ear-training app that you would recommend. Perhaps I’m not looking in the right places. Help. Thank you.
I have a question: is there any reason you put Ab on the 4th fret of the E string instead of G#? In my mind, as we are going up starting from 1 to 7, it should have been G# instead of Ab and I am wondering why is it like this. Would highly appreciate your answer as I am a bit confused.
