How to Play the Jazz Bass: a blog about learning how to play the bass.

On this site you’ll find jazz bass lessons and tips, a blog on the history of jazz pioneers and great jazz bassists, songs in standard notation and tab, jazz bass transcriptions of classic recordings and much more!

Welcome to How to Play the Jazz Bass, a blog about learning how to play the bass.

I’m not an expert on this subject, so this is just about my experience and what I’ve learned from it. It’s not an instruction site. It’s more of a “this is what I did and this is what happened” kind of thing.

I started playing in 1980, when I was 15 years old. My first bass was a Fender Musicmaster that my parents got me for my birthday. It was actually the first electric instrument I ever played, which means that I had no idea what I was doing.

In fact, I didn’t even own a bass amp until several years later. And at first, I never had any lessons or anything like that.

How to Play the Jazz Bass.

A blog about learning how to play the bass. Written by a bass player for bass players of all levels.

How to Play the Jazz Bass

Welcome to HowToPlayTheJazzBass.com!

This site is all about learning how to play the jazz bass. I’m a bass player and am still learning how to play the jazz bass, so I thought it would be a good idea to blog about my journey as I travel down this path. Hopefully, you can learn from some of my mistakes, and we can all become better musicians together.

If you have any questions feel free to contact me!

Welcome to How to Play the Jazz Bass! Here we will cover many aspects of the jazz bass, from basic jazz bass lines, walking bass lines and soloing. We will discuss playing over various chord progressions and how to practice to get better.

I started playing jazz bass in 2001 and found it very difficult. I had listened to jazz for a number of years before that but never understood how it was played. I studied with my teacher for about 1 year before he left for New York City. After that, I was pretty much on my own.

I taught myself through all the mistakes and many hours of practice. Since then, I have recorded 4 CDs as leader and 4 others as sideman. I have been teaching professionally since 2006 and hope that you find this website helpful in your learning process!

How to Play the Jazz Bass with Ted Lo and Alex Iles, part of the Double Bass Blog.

This blog will cover all aspects of technique, equipment, theory and practice for the jazz bassist. The focus will be on jazz but we will also cover classical technique as well as other bass related topics.

Our first post will be an introduction to this blog and our mission statement.