Wheat's BassBook

Introduction

I started playing bass in 1984. There weren't any good books out there for the bass. And the web wasn't a thing yet. I learned mostly from books and magazines intended for guitarists, from other musicians, and from learning songs off cassettes. I had a three-ring binder where I collected useful articles and jotted down my own discoveries. In the early 1990s, having had some success in local bands, a few people started approaching me about lessons. Thus, I taught a bit on the side while I was in college. My binder became the foundation of my teaching. And that got me interested in teaching as a career. Today, there are lots of great books out there as well as YouTube, TikTok, and the web in general. But I still wanted to create my own. So I did. It debuted on the web in 1997.

Is it Really Free?

The web-based version of Wheat's BassBook has always been and always will be free. I've thought of spinning it or parts of it off into commercial products, but I've never (as of June 2024) done it. Even if I eventually do, this web version will remain free. Wheat's BassBook is my original work. I expect you to respect my copyright. But you're free to use it. You're free to print it out for your own use as a student of the bass. You can even print it out for your students. Just don't sell it or plagierize it. If you want to support the work I do here, you can buy me a coffee, buy a JamesNotJim album from my Bandcamp site, or spin up JamesNotJim on your favorite streaming platform.

A Note on the Format

I've often resorted to tab because it is an easy way to present music in ASCII. I didn't have a notation editor when I was writing most of this, and creating notation in graphics editors is painfully slow. At some point, I'll replace the tab-only examples with tab + standard notation examples. I'm not against tablature, but I also 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 that section can be expanded to cover all of the bassics, I'll refer you to some additional resources:

• I very much loved Ron Velosky's Sight Reading for the Bass. But Ron died young and the book, on a small, independant press, went out of print. You can sometimes find it used, but it's scarce and often expensive.
• Recently, I've discovered Janek Gwizdala's Bass Player's Guide to Sight Reading. This is an excellent guide which covers the basics all the way up to fairly complicated charts. I like especially that the advanced pieces are based on well-known jazz standards. And there's a short but excellent glossary at the end.
• Finally, if you want an all-in-one book that covers a wide range of topics, including reading, Patrick Pfeiffer's Bass Guitar for Dummies is rock solid.

Assumptions

This book assumes that you understand how to read tablature (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. 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

You can read Wheat's BassBook from beginning to end, but it's designed more for jumping around. 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 Book Two, and and also 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.