Bass Lessons

I don’t generally teach bluegrass bass on a permanent basis, but rather will give lessons as needed to get beginners started. We’ll cover the proper technique and play a variety of songs to develop the skill of hearing chord changes and playing in all the common keys. Also, we’ll look at how to play waltzes, 4/4 and walking bass lines. I have prepared some bass exercises and also have transcribed some of the great bass players bass lines so we can see how professional bass players actually play.

Don’t forget the Group Lessons. They can be an excellent place for beginning bass players to bring their skills up in a short amount of time or learn a new style. I have a number of bass transcriptions for both bluegrass and Western Swing below.

Here are some helpful resources for bass:

• Walking Bass exercise
• Root, 5th for all chords

My list of practice suggestions has always included playing with others. Band-in-a-Box or a similar program to play along with can help you get there. It can also be a good “non-complaining” accompianist for when you want to go through your fiddle tunes for hours on end. It can also be your metronome as you try to play slow cleanly, or get faster. It’s also great for improvising over chord progressions. If you have the Band-in-a-Box program but don’t want to take the time to enter the chords, I have done all the work. You can download a zip file containing the chord progressions for 161 fiddle tunes.