After Bass Buzz I went to Study Bass with Andrew Pouska for about 2 months. He has 3 Lesson Tracks. Josh introduces a lot of musical theory concepts, but Andrew will take you 1 or 2 steps deeper on these music.
concepts. I went through 2 of the Study Bass Lesson tracks, now understand WHY we played what Josh taught us. I’ve spent the last 3 months honing fretting, finger & YES Picking technique and applying these musical concepts.
What I mean by applying the musical concepts…take a backing track off YouTube or song, listening to them and concurrently developing summary sheets determining tempo, key, Song Structure, chord progression of song/backing track, clap the rhythms used in the song …then using Musescore (free) to to compose bass lines using the tools Josh introduced and with the understanding of music theory I got from Study Bass (basically free, but a donation is very much appreciated).
After completing Josh’s course in December …to date I have written 10 bass covers for Grateful Dead tunes…and now Jam GD with a Lead Guitarist on JamKazam every other week…adding one new song between sessions.
If can read music, you can quickly write music…now when I see a Tab…I recognized the triad, arpeggio it represents, rewrite the song in musical form (notes and rhythm) and practice to my song sheet… not blindly and without any understanding to a Tab! Composing your own bass lines is easier than you can imagine…start with Whole note chords for each measure, add 1/2 notes the fifth or octave…as you develop the rhythm or us 1/4 notes…you room for more notes…listen maybe the 3rd, 6th or the 7th or octave is appropriate…look for places to add chromatics to transition between chords…or play the root and for the remaining notes of the measure find a pathway of chromatics or a scale to the next chord…now you have walking bass lines.
Online lessons are great to watch and get ideas…but learn the theory of harmonization… Study Bass is a great place to learn it. Listening, dissecting the songs, writing the songs, practicing the songs, rewriting them…you will learn the fretboard, you will learn to read music… you will play music (you own)…and you will develop technique. You’ll be amazed at what you can teach yourself