Advancements in teaching methods now make it easy to learn bass guitar.
This is a basic introduction to tuning, chords, and styles.
Bass has become one of the most popular choices of stringed instruments on the market today! Although similar in shape to an electric guitar, it's neck is much longer, and like a guitar neck, has a solid body with the frets grooved into it.
The body is generally larger, and often heavier.
The 4 strings are tuned to the notes E, A, D, G.
You tune a bass guitar the same way - the same intervals - as a standard guitar.
This is because the lower 4 strings of a bass are seen as just octaves lower than the standard guitar.
The bass helps to give harmony, and it lays down the foundation notes and beats in a song.
Without the support of good bass lines, a song sounds thin, even empty.
Bass gives music power, depth, and body.
I know all you new players out there burn to become superstars, and have committed to learn to play fast, so let's get right into bass guitar basics.
Harmony is all about the chords, and progression of chords.
A chord progression is a series of chord changes.
A chord progression is also considered as a harmony or song that has a series of repeated changes.
Many much-loved songs consist of patterns of only three chords, put through rhythmic changes, such as Ritchie Valens' "La Bamba," and The Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," both classics.
As a guitar player, you will want to develop a large repertoire (mental library) of chords, so you can quickly learn some easy chord songs.
Beat is the most basic and ancient element in music; it is music's unit of time, its rhythm.
The beats you make with your hands, tapping your foot, or bobbing to music, are natural human responses to rhythmic pulses.
Anthropologists have discovered percussion instruments tens of thousands of years old.
Rhythm is a fundamental quality of being human.
Bass guitar keys right into our basic love of rhythm.
Playing your guitar properly creates a steady beat called the tempo.
When you listen to songs, you will hear how the bass enhances and holds up the harmony, and beat, of the song.
In pop music, the bass is used as a simple part of the band, sometimes being out-shone by the vocals and other instruments.
In hip-hop, funk and reggae, the melody of the songs rise from the bass.
This means the baseline is prominent.
There are exceptions in rock genre, where bass players have become highly accomplished soloists, like Geddy Lee (My personal favorite).
Bill Clements has one arm and has mastered tapping to a stunning level.
Remember when you watch these players, they all started from where you are now...
at the beginning! Once you have mastered the basics of playing your bass guitar, you can copy any style of playing you prefer, or many styles, and you will even develop your own.
A good bass guitarist can do always do a solo that gets the audience on its feet, banging out visceral riffs to overpower the sound.
It's the base that hits you in the gut and makes the music physical, emotionally moving.
The baselines you use for a solo will differ for each style of music.

• If you're a rock star, you will play your bass solo during a pause in the song set aside just for you.
  
• If you're into heavy metal, then the bass will be "shredded," and played with fingers tapping out the sound on the strings.
  
• Funky solos are created by slapping the strings, in a jazz style.
  

Many people find that bass guitar, in the beginning at least, is easier to learn, as it is only 4 stringed, unlike other guitars that have 6 or even more strings.
Online lessons are now readily available, and highly developed.
You can easily find sources to get you on your way quickly toward mastery.
With as few as 3-4 chords mastered, you can get started creating songs and playing with other guitarists fairly quickly.
Before too long, you'll have some killer calluses! So, starting with this basic information, you will begin learning bass guitar and be on your way to becoming the next Geddy Lee!!!!!!!