Top 8 Best Online Bass Lessons

The internet is full of resources, but finding the best online bass lessons can be difficult. Check out our Top 8 list!

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In this free lesson you will learn…

  • The 8 best places online for bass lessons
  • How to use all of this knowledge in your practice
  • Why it’s important to look at the bass as its own instrument
  • Why learning bass is awesome!

The Internet Is All About That Bass

There’s something fascinating about putting the guitar down for a minute and picking up the bass.

Sure, it kind of looks like a guitar, but it hardly acts like one – which makes it a lot of fun to explore on its own terms.

If you’ve recently picked up a bass, we hope you check out these lessons for starters!

The Difference Between Bass and Guitar

Bass Guitar Scales: The Ultimate Guide

6 Essential Bass Lessons

Bass For Beginners: An Essential Guide

When you’ve exhausted the resources here, you’ll be glad to know that there are loads of online resources for improving your bass game!

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As lifelong bass learners ourselves, we’re constantly on the lookout for the best lessons, information, demonstrations, and tutorials.

Whether you’re preparing for a gig, trying to get a little bit of that Geddy Lee magic, or wondering how the music theory you know for guitar translates to bass, there are excellent resources online for exactly what you need.

Here are the best online bass lessons, the websites and YouTube instructors we go to when we’re trying to level up on the bass.

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Best Online Bass Lessons 1: Studybass

One fundamental concept running through the best online bass lessons is the idea that the bass has a completely different function than the guitar.

  • The guitar is versatile and can do chords, lead playing, solo orchestration, and general ‘filling in.’
  • The bass, on the other hand, has a more limited function for beginners.
  • For the starter bassist, the best online bass lessons start from the principle that the bass is there to hold down the fort for harmony and rhythm.

With that in mind, the first things you want to learn on the bass are how to reinforce chords and how to propel and emphasize rhythm.

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Studybass gets it! This website is devoted to getting you from “why am I playing the bass?” to “how can I rock harder on the bass?”

  • The lessons do much more than show you things to copy.
  • There’s music theory included in even the beginning modules.

In your first lessons, expect to learn basic technique, the foundation of chords, practice exercises, and even a few songs!

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Best Online Bass Lessons 2: TalkingBass

Some of us are approaching the bass with some prior guitar or other musical experience. Some of us are coming to the bass as completely new musicians.

Either way, having an absolute beginner’s mindset can be a great advantage in learning how to play the bass.

Some differences between the bass and other instruments or musical functions are pretty obvious, but there are a lot of little bass-specific details that can be missed if we don’t start from the beginning.

Having a visual lesson like a video – even better, a free video – can get you up and running and pointed in the right direction from day one.

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Enter TalkingBass.

Here is a group of the best online bass lessons in a YouTube channel, starting from scratch.

  • The introductory lesson covers everything you might not have known you’d want to start with, including strap length, string names, and fundamentals of electronic sound production.
  • There’s no showing off, no fancy demonstrations, and no stone left unturned.
  • You’ll finish the introductory lesson knowing more about how the bass works than any self-taught player.

You can expect to learn tuning, switching from string to string, and how the frets help you to create dazzling bass lines.

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Pro-Tip: Like most beginning bass players, you may ask yourself whether you should use a pick or your fingers to check out the best online bass lessons.

Try both! Bass players may gravitate toward one or the other, but just like guitar players, bassists tend to switch back and forth depending on the needs of the song.

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Best Online Bass Lessons 3: Bassbuzz

In a live classroom or lesson, your instructor explains something to you, practices it with you, and gets feedback on how you understand it.

From there, an instructor can adjust a teaching method or come at the same information a different way again and again, until you are both sure that you understand what’s going on.

  • You can independently simulate that experience (minus the personal interaction with the teacher) by looking at more than one of the best online bass lessons.
  • All of the best online bass lessons feature teachers who cover the same fundamentals in some way.

Checking out more than one resource shows you how different instructors handle the same concepts.

bass-lessons-for-beginners

Bassbuzz gives you some of the best online bass lessons beyond what the bass is, and tells you right off the bat that you’ll be progressing quickly.

  • Their “Beginner to Badass” series is a step-by-step program to get you up and running, and playing some awesome bass lines, as quickly as you can get through the modules.
  • Bassbuzz follows the principle of deliberate practice, meaning that each step of your progress on the bass should be an increment that you can master in one to three practice sessions.

You can expect to learn enough theory and technique to play familiar songs with the Bassbuzz curriculum.

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Best Online Bass Lessons 4: Free Bass Lessons From Little Kids Rock

One of the most daunting things about playing bass, or guitar, or any multi-stringed and fretted instrument, is figuring out where the notes are on the fretboard.

  • The strings barely look different from one another, and there are typically four of them on the bass guitar.
  • Sure, there are those dots, but it seems impossible to be able to map out a separate note for each string and fret location.
  • If you’ve played the guitar before, you’ve probably noticed that it’s pretty easy to chug along for months using the same three chords and the same three strumming rhythms.

With the bass however, you simply have to know where things are in order to get up and running.

The best online bass lessons are here to show you a manageable way to get that knowledge.

bass-lessons

Don’t let the name fool you. Free Bass Lessons from Little Kids Rock will show you exactly what you need to know to begin mastering the fretboard.

  • The bass is the instrument that leads your ear from one chord to the next, basically by heading toward the root of the upcoming chord.
  • In order to take charge on the bass, you’ll need to be familiar with where the notes are on the neck. You don’t have to learn it all at once, but this lesson gives you an excellent start.

Expect to learn where all the natural notes (C, D, E, F, G, A, and B) are on the first seven frets, which will prepare you for almost any jam!

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Best Online Bass Lessons 5: JamPlay

Some of the best in-person bass lessons we have ever had were with some more accomplished friend or acquaintance in a very informal setting.

It’s a gift when you can approach a bass player you admire, ask “How do you do that?” and get a patient demonstration and mini-lesson in response.

There are an awful lot of bass lessons available online, many of which are videos produced by someone who just had enough passion for the subject to want to sit down and make a lesson for you.

As useful as many of the YouTube lessons shot in living rooms are, there’s something to be said for learning from a slick multi-angle video.

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JamPlay has some of the best online bass lessons out there if you’re looking for professional-quality video production.

There are four main sections of bass lessons: beginning, styles, songs, and artists.

  • The first two focus on general bass skills.
  • The songs section has an extensive library of tutorials, so you can search for the song you would like to learn and find a video lesson devoted to that song.
  • Not all of the best online bass lessons have celebrity teachers in their corner, but JamPlay does.

There are videos by some high-profile session players as well as people who are just about as famous as you can get playing the bass!

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Pro-Tip: Many of the websites featuring the best online bass lessons are tuition-based modules.

You can study bass at Berklee College of Music for about $1200, or you can go on another website and pay $20.

Before you invest, check out the website’s YouTube channel. They all have them. You’ll be able to see enough to make a decision as to which one to try first.

Best Online Bass Lessons 6: MusicCollege TV

Although you may have been switching between using a pick and using your fingers to start figuring out how to play the bass, at some point you’ll want to dig into picking hand technique.

One of the most fascinating and unique things about the bass is playing it with your fingers.

Even practicing fingerstyle guitar can’t quite prepare you for what it feels like to deal with those giant bass strings with your bare fingers.

The sound however, is beautiful. The attack on the bass ranges from soft and spongy to tight and slapping, and there are almost as many techniques as there are players.

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  • MusicCollege TV has not only some of the best online bass lessons in terms of thorough curriculum, but also some very helpful pointers on picking hand technique.
  • MusicCollege TV isn’t limited to the bass, but it has a complete beginning course and an intermediate course in bass. To top it all off, it’s all right there for you on YouTube.
  • Both the beginning and intermediate curriculums discuss picking hand technique at a level you can handle and in manageable chunks of information.

The intermediate curriculum also takes the theory and practical basics from the beginning course and expands them in a very satisfying way.

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Best Online Bass Lessons 7: Daric Bennett

We all think of different things when we imagine ourselves at the pinnacle of our bass careers.

For some of us, it’s the dazzling counterpoint of Chris Squire. Or the flying virtuosic speed of Tal Wilkenfeld. Or the consistent thumping eighth notes of Michael Anthony.

And then there’s the dream of being Jaco Pastorius.

Well, you wouldn’t want to actually BE Jaco, but wouldn’t it be nice to have those funky jazz chops?

Some of the best online bass lessons point you in a direction you didn’t think yourself capable of, and just start handing you the magic piece by piece.

National-Guitar-Academy

If you are looking for the best online bass lessons to sprinkle some Soul, Funk, and Jazz into your playing, Daric Bennett has that magic for you.

  • Now, Bennett’s site will require you to join to get in on the magic, but he really delivers the bass knowledge, one fantastic trick at a time.
  • If you would like to learn to slap the bass, sound like Jaco, or learn some R & B tunes, you owe it to yourself to at least take advantage of the free trial and check it out.

Another highlight of Bennett’s lessons is that he takes one aspect of theory and presents it in a way that will have you understanding it more deeply than you thought you did before.

Best Online Bass Lessons 8: Scott’s Bass Lessons

When we choose a bass instructor (or any instructor for that matter), it’s important to feel like it’s possible to establish a really good rapport.

This may seem like a silly concept to apply to the best online bass lessons.

How can you establish a relationship with a video?

  • Well, while you’re not interacting directly with the person on the other side of the screen, you still need to feel like this person is speaking your language.
  • Some of us learn best from a calm and methodical presence.
  • Some of us are inspired by seeing our instructors modeling the techniques we’d like to learn.

Among the very best online bass lessons are those given to you through the magic of YouTube by Scott’s Bass Lessons.

There is always something new coming out of Scott’s Bass Lessons.

  • That’s saying something, because after eight years of uploading bass instructional videos, a lot of people would be scraping the bottom of the content barrel by now.
  • It’s easy to find lessons on everything from rhythm basics to particular artists’ styles and even discussions on gear. The YouTube channel is categorized for easy browsing.

Scott’s Bass Lessons are inspiring and full of personality and fun, and there is something in each 10 to 15-minute lesson for every aspiring bass player.

Don’t Forget To Jam With Your Friends!

These resources are the best online bass lessons that we could find, but don’t limit your bass learning to what you can find here.

The best way to learn any instrument, especially the bass, is to take whatever knowledge you have and jam with someone.

It doesn’t matter whether you know two scales or three notes. Get out there and play, and you’ll learn much faster!

Recommended Resources

If you enjoyed this lesson on the best online bass lessons, feel free to check out our other content below!

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