Alot of Bass players who first start out want to bust out solos like Flea or Les Claypool from Primus. If you try to go that route you will be met with frustration (like sprinting before learning to walk)
It's important to remember that the Bass Player is probabley the most important person in the band, but is the least appreciated. The reason for that is because you are the glue between the Drummer and the Guitarist (the two that want to solo the most) and then all three of you must learn to lay off to allow the Vocalist to come through. You can't have everyone solo at once. If you keep that in mind, your life as a bass player will be alot easier.
It's the bass player is who gets people moving/dancing, so if you and/or the Drummer don't mesh, you will mess up your audience's rhythm and no one will like what your doing. It's important that you can hang with a drummer. Since you're just starting, you probabley don't have a drummer... this is a GOOD thing!
There is no better drummer on the planet than a Metronome. You can get a simple metronome from a guitar shop for around $20. All a metronome does is make clicks at the interval you set it to, it will just click, or beep, to the tempo you set. It's never off (unlike your friend who says he can play drums). Get one of those to practice with. I recommend you use the simple kind of Metronome first to get used to the idea of playing with it. If and when you go to Record and Album, you will have to play to a "Click Track" which is a metronome. You can get fancier metronomes that are actually beat machines. These are better to get creative juices flowing for songwriting, but overcomplicated for practicing. Remember, Walk before you sprint.
When you play a note by pushing down on the string, you always want to push the string down just in behind of the fret you are playing (the actuall piece of metal sticking up on the fretboard). If you push down directly on the raised portion of the fret, it will cause an unwanted ring, and will kill the note you are trying to play. This happens when you put your finger to far back of the fret too. So as long as you are pushing down just behind the fret, the note should ring out for a long time and not just die out. Play around with that to see what I mean. It's easier with the frets further up the neck (and by up i mean where the frets get smaller). Those you can pretty much just play them in the middle, but the wider frets you will want to stay closer to fret (to the left of the fret if you are playing a right handed bass and you are looking down at it while playing)
As for your hands you must work them out. The best thing to do is to play every single fret on a string with your fingers alternating (1234, 1234, 1234) until you get to the 12th fret, and then go back down to the 1st fret doing the same alternating. Then go to the next string and repeat. It doesn't sound cool at all, but does jogging on a treadmill look cool, no, it's your body that looks cool afterwords. These are known as "Spider Excercises". You can find all sorts of different ones to do on youtube. Of cousre as you do these excercises, make sure you do them in time with a metronome. If you can't keep up with the tempo, just lower it down and work your way up to a faster tempo day by day.
Also get a guitar Tuner. Rely on it at first, but when you get more comfortable playing harmonics (a way that you can create a sound without pushing the string down onto the fret board, but instead you softly touch it with your finger, the 12th fret on any string does this the best), learn to tune using the "5th fret method". There are lots of videos on youtube on how that works.
Your final decision to make is "To Pick or not to Pick". Personally, I think learning to play without a pick is better. You can use your thumb like a pick, and you still have 4 other fingers you can use in conjunction to play other strings. HOWEVER, a pick has a much more crsip sound that can really punch someone in the face (like Emmas playing does). But Emma plays both with a pick and without, which is why she's a baddass
This is enough to get started with. After that you go into what's called Music Theory (or sometimes called Scales or Modes). This is not as confusing as some make it out to be. It's just patterns of the notes on your bass. There are only 12 notes on a Bass, and 7 of them are considerd whole notes (A,B,C,D,E,F,G). These are the white keys on a piano. The other 5 notes are the black keys, which are known as Sharps/Flats. Sharp means the note you are playing is higher than it's Whole note, and Flat means is is lower than it's whole note. So in a row the notes go:
A
A Sharp / B Flat
B
C
C sharp / D Flat
D
D Sharp / E Flat
E
F
F Sharp / G Flat
G
G Sharp / A Flat
A again (this A is higer sounding than the A you started with, otherwise known as A's Octave).
When you play the first sting on your bass with out holding down any frets and you play the same string but you push down the 12th Fret, you are playing the same note, just at different Octaves. Then of course you could go up one more octave by playing the 24th Fret (if you have one, not all basses do... and I've seen some basses with a 36th fret, but that's just ridiculous
)
The way you determine whether or not you call something a sharp or flat is in relation to the Key Signature of the song. The Key Signature is only something you will get into once you start writing your music out in musical notation, so you don't really need to know that for the moment. The big thing to remember is that there are two sets of notes that don't have a sharp or a flat IN BETWEEN THEM (B and C, and E and F). Technically they do, but again, that's when you are dealing with Key Signatures, which you don't need to worry about. Just for example, if a song is in the Key of C, and the musical notation tells you to play a C Flat, you're actually playing a B, but according to the Notation and Key Signature, it's a C Flat. Kinda silly, but classical muscians in orchestras have to deal with that
As I said before music theory is studying the patterns of How you go from A to A's Octave, and then how you go from C to C's Octave. Learn those two because they are the most common Scales (or Modes) you will play. These are only WHOLE notes, you don't play any sharps/flats. So they way you would play A B C D E F G A, will be a different pattern than the way you would play C D E F G A B C. The way you play A to A is called a minor Scale, and the way you play C to C is called a Major Scale. When you play the Minor Scale in A, it sounds kinda sad, where as the Major Scale in C is a little more Happy sounding. The idea of music theory is that you could play a C MINOR scale. When you do that, the scale of going C to C sounds sad, because you are playing the same patteren as A, and when you play that pattern on C you end up playing some sharps/flats. The same thing would happen if you played a A MAJOR scale, you would have sharps/flats. So now it's a numbers game. Playing A to A sounds different from B to B, C to C, D to D, E to E, F to F, and G to G, even though you are playing the same 7 notes, and when you apply the pattern from one to another, you get a scale that has sharps and flats, some more than others. A to A (or A Minor) is by far the easiest to play.
This is how a A Minor Scale looks like in TAB (an alternative to learning musical notation). TABs are a great way to learn how to play a song, but as you can see, it gives you no idea as to how fast to play it. Just what frets are used.
The number corrisponds to the fret you play:
A MINOR scale (Your fingering goes 1,3,4, then 1,3,4, then 1,3. (1 is index, 2 is middle, 3 is Ring, 4 is Pinky))
G--------------------------------
D----------------5-7-------------
A---------5-7-8-----------------
E --5-7-8-----------------------
This would be a A MAJOR scale (played 2,4 then 1,2,4 then 1,3,4)
G------------------------------
D--------------4-6-7-------------
A-------4-5-7--------------------
E---5-7--------------------------
You also might notice that you don't necessarily have to play these scales using the finger position I'm showing you. There are two ways of playing a scale, closed position and open position. Open position is a stretch where you cover more area, whereas closed postion keeps your fingers to one fret:
Example of open poasition A MINOR ( 2,4 then 1,2,4 then 1,2)
G----------------------------
D---------------3-5-------------
A--------3-5-7------------------
E----5-7-----------------------
So the open position is a lot more of a stretch because you are jumping 2 frets between fingers, whereas closed position you basically have a finger per fret. When you play Scales from A to A to A, you will play the closed postion first into the open position so that you can play up to A's 2nd Octave with out having to shift your hand left or right... but that will be later on (not to mention you'll need a 5 string to be able to do that)
This should be enough to melt your brain: So I will show you one more thing to melt it even further:
As far as songs go, anything by Rage against the Machine is a plus, especially their early stuff. Most of Rage songs are very dependant on the Bass, or in other words, the bass is the instrument that is making the "Riff" of the song.
Rage will help you alot with timing, which for a bass player, IS EVERYTHING!
That's enough for now I'm sure, sorry if it seems like a lot. But to tell you the truth, everything that I have learned that I think is useful is in this post. Any questions, feel free to ask
