Introduction

For years I made notes toward a bass method/reference book because there simply wasn't a decent one out there when I was trying to learn how to play. There are much better books now, but I still thought it would be good to put together a solid book for bassists with access to the web. And I wanted to create my own, as a way of giving back to the internet community. I hope that I have provided some in-depth study here, as well as a comprehensive source of basic reference information. Please let me know what parts of this book you find useful and what you'd like me to add. I still consider this a work in progress and will be happy to add sections on other topics.

A Note on the Format

I've often resorted to tab because it is an easy way to present music in ASCII. I don't have a notation editor at the moment, and creating notation in Photoshop is painfully slow. I'm not against tabulature, but I don't want anyone to misinterpret my use of it here as a slant against standard notation. Reading standard notation is a very useful skill. For those of you interested in learning to read standard notation, I've included a reading primer, but, until this section can be expanded to cover all of the bassics, I'll refer you to some additional resources:

The best resource I've found is Ron Velosky's Sight Reading for the Bass. If the very concept of reading music is new to you, I recommend Dave Stewart's A Musician's Guide to Reading and Writing Music. It is a very witty guide and a handy reference book which starts from absolute zero and teaches all of the basics

Assumptions:
This book assumes that you understand how to read tabulature (a.k.a. tab). If you don't know how to read tab, there are many sites on the internet which can provide an introduction to it. One good one is the rec.music.makers.bass frequently asked questions file, which I host and maintain. I've tried to define all terminology as I introduce it. And I've tried to stick to a few basic ways of naming things. To designate a sharp, I use the pound symbol (#), to designate a flatted note, I will either use a lower case "b" or a minus sign (-). This book also assumes that you are right handed (or that you play right handed). Most of the examples in this book are shown on the four string bass. All of the examples are still useful on the five or six string, of course, but they don't take the extra strings into consideration (except in a few examples).

I've tried to include some fundamentals of music in the first section, but I do not intend the book to be a complete introduction to music. I've incorporated a lot of material on fretting and sounding notes into this new version, but for the time being, I still assume that you have a basic understanding of rhythm notation (i.e. that you know the difference between an eighth note, a sixteenth note and a triplet). This book is aimed at the beginner, but is also designed for those who already know the basics of playing but want to better understand scales, chords, and theory.

How to Use this Book:
Wheat's BassBook isn't meant to be a linear doccument, and the new structure attempts to further emphasize that fact. I don't intend for you to begin with the very first chapter and proceed straight through to the last chapter. Rather, I want you to jump around, and the book will only make sense if you do. No one would reccomend learning everything about sounding notes (including slaping, popping, and two hand tapping) before learning a major scale. But to make this a usefull resource, as well as a usefull method, I decided to arrange the books in the current manner. Book one focusses mostly on mechanics, book two focusses on scales and chords, book three focuses on more global applications of the material learned in books one and two, and book four includes an assortment of other useful topics which didn't fit in anywhere else. Your playing level and previous experience will determine which sections are useful to you.