Bass Guitar: 4 Effective and Essential Bass Guitar Exercises

Looking for bass guitar exercises to supercharge your playing? We’ve got you covered – Now let’s jump in!

In this free lesson you will learn…

• 4 Powerfully effective bass guitar exercises
• How to approach similar pieces of music in different ways
• How to think outside the box about bass guitar
• How to tighten up your left hand
• How to help your hands communicate better with each other.

Over 100,000 guitar-learners get our world-class guitar tips & tutorials sent straight to their inbox: Click here to join them

An Introduction To Bass Guitar Exercises

The bass player is the backbone of any band or musical project.

Without a tight bass section, entire musical arrangements can fall apart in a matter of 4 bars.

No pressure, right?

Exactly – Which is why practicing a series of bass guitar exercises on a regular basis can help us tighten-up our playing, and the band’s low-end in general.

Not to mention, you’ll feel like a rockstar with your Grade-A-level bass playing.

These may not seem important at first, but once you start practicing these bass guitar exercises frequently, you will start to notice a difference in the tightness of your playing.

Want to know what every accomplished musician ever has in common?

Exercise.

That’s right.

The ability to show up limber and prepared to play music is what makes a great player.

This is why we need to put our fingers through some rigorous training every now and again.

• Between stretching, learning challenging pieces of music and playing our own, our fingers get a workout as it is.
• However, most of the time they don’t get a focused workout that helps them move with more efficiency across the fretboard.
• We’ve put together a list of four super-effective bass guitar exercises that you can practice to keep your fingers moving swiftly.

Let’s go into a bit more detail about this below.

Why Bother With Bass Guitar Exercises?

Having a focused regimen of practice really makes all the difference in the world.

Let’s look at the example of a bodybuilder.

• A bodybuilder doesn’t start trying to increase their strength by grabbing the heaviest weights they can find.
• Instead, they work up to specific goals that get them to where they want to be over time.
• They plan according to what they are currently capable of, and set their goals in reasonable ways to achieve them better.

This can be said for basically any musician as well.

Whether you’re trying to build speed, make your fingers more limber or just generally sound better, exercising your fingers is super important.

Pro Tip: With effective practice using the bass guitar exercises in this lesson, your fingers will grow with you instead of falling behind as you progress with your bass guitar journey.

This is an important concept to understand. As we begin to better understand music, we will want to try a variety of new things to advance our bass guitar playing.

• Ensuring that your fingers are able to keep pace with your brain’s ideas is incredibly important
• Regular practice helps us keep pace as we seek out more challenging pieces of music to both play and write.

Whether you’re a bassist, a clarinet player, some type of obscure horn player or anything in between – Practice does always help to make perfect.

Now, let’s talk frequency.

How Often Should I Exercise?

These bass guitar exercises can be played as frequently as you like to help your fingers grow and build dexterity.

• We designed these exercises to only be as difficult as you make them.
• What does that mean?
• These exercises can be mastered fairly easily at slow speeds.

As you speed up your practice however, you will find it more difficult to play these notes clearly and effectively.

This will force you to take your time and sound out each note as each tempo, which is an important concept for bass guitarists especially.

At National Guitar Academy, we recommend daily practice for the most effective results.

This, however does not work for everyone. As such, we recommend you keep a practice journal and set a scheduled amount of days each week that you will practice.

Pro Tip: We recommend using these bass guitar exercises as a way of opening up your practice time.

These bass guitar exercises will keep your fingers limber and ready to tear up any song you like.

This may seem like an exhausting task that takes the fun out of bass guitar playing, but in fact it will help you improve faster in the long run.

While we’re on the topic, let’s chat for a second more about the benefits of effective practice.