Below I’ll give you my selections for the best Bass Guitar books by a few categories. I will cover these and other great books more in depth later.
- 1. Bass Guitar For Dummies, Book + Online Video & Audio Instruction (For Dummies Series) (2014)
- 2. Music Theory for the Bass Player: A Comprehensive and Hands-on Guide to Playing with More Confidence and Freedom (2015)
- 3. Bass Guitar Primer Book for Beginners: with Online Video & Audio Access (2018)
- 4. Creative Bass Technique Exercises: 70 Melodic Exercises to Develop Great Feel & Technique on Bass Guitar (Play Bass Guitar) (2019)
- 5. How to Play the Bass: A Beginner’s Guide to Learning the Basics of the Bass, Reading Music, and Playing Songs with Audio Recordings (2019)
- 6. Teach Yourself to Play Bass: A Quick and Easy Introduction for Beginners (2015)
- 7. Walking Bass for Jazz and Blues: The Complete Walking Bass Method (2016)
- 8. Martin Taylor Walking Bass For Jazz Guitar: Learn to Masterfully Combine Jazz Chords with Walking Basslines (2018)
- 9. Bass Technique Finger Gym: Build stamina, coordination, dexterity and speed with essential bass exercises (2018)
- 10. First 50 Songs You Should Play On Bass (2016)
- 11. First 15 Lessons – Bass Guitar: A Beginner’s Guide, Featuring Step-By-Step Lessons with Audio, Video, and Popular Songs! (2018)
- 12. Sight Reading Mastery for Bass Guitar (Sight Reading for Modern Instruments) (2014)
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1. Bass Guitar For Dummies, Book + Online Video & Audio Instruction (For Dummies Series) (2014)
The bass is the heart of music. So leave center stage to the other musicians—you have more important work to do. You can find everything you need to dominate bass in Bass Guitar For Dummies, 3rd Edition. You’ll get expert advice on the basics, like deciding what kind of bass to buy and which accessories are necessary and which are just nice to have. Plus, you’ll get step-by-step instructions for getting started, from how to hold and position your bass to reading notation and understanding chords, scales, and octaves to playing solos and fills. Whether…
2. Music Theory for the Bass Player: A Comprehensive and Hands-on Guide to Playing with More Confidence and Freedom (2015)
Note: To ensure to receive the latest version of this book buy from Amazon directly (not an Amazon marketplace seller).Music Theory for the Bass Player is a comprehensive and immediately applicable guide to making you a well-grounded groover, informed bandmate and all-around more creative musician. This is a workbook, so have your bass and a pen ready to fill out the engaging Test Your Understanding questions! This version is revised for typos and to add video flags. Have you always wanted to learn music theory but felt it was too overwhelming a task? Perhaps all the books seem…
3. Bass Guitar Primer Book for Beginners: with Online Video & Audio Access (2018)
Bass Guitar Primer Book for Beginners with Online Video & Audio Access by Bert Casey is the most complete and easy to understand beginning bass method available today. These beginner lessons cover correct left & right hand technique as well as parts of the bass, alternating bass notes, two beat, eighth notes, walking patterns, common rock & roll riffs, and complete discussion of theory as it applies to the bass. After learning how to play notes, you will move on to the songbook portion of the course and start learning how to play simple patterns and easy songs like Johnny B. Goode and…
4. Creative Bass Technique Exercises: 70 Melodic Exercises to Develop Great Feel & Technique on Bass Guitar (Play Bass Guitar) (2019)
No More Boring Bass Exercises!Session ace Dan Hawkins has recorded hundreds of sessions and knows what it takes to achieve flawless technique that stands up to the scrutiny of the studio. In he offers a set of technique-building workouts that will solve all common technical problems.Keep Your Bass Playing Fresh If you’re struggling with any of the above, then is for you. Learn to play over drone exercises to improve your ears and build musical independence.Discover fully-formed musical grooves, riffs and licks you can incorporate into your playing right now – each one carefully crafted to…
5. How to Play the Bass: A Beginner’s Guide to Learning the Basics of the Bass, Reading Music, and Playing Songs with Audio Recordings (2019)
Learn everything you need to know about making music with this incredibly detailed and practical guide to mastering the bass guitar.The bass guitar is a completely underrated musical instrument but it serves an extremely important function. It gives music heart and depth. Other instruments may seize the spotlight, but without the sound of the bass guitar to tie it together, it often falls flat more often than not.If you’re a bass aficionado and are looking for a way to shorten your learning curve and have little to no experience with music, this book is for you.In this concise guide, Jason Randall…
6. Teach Yourself to Play Bass: A Quick and Easy Introduction for Beginners (2015)
(Bass Instruction). Do you want to learn how to play the bass guitar quickly, but don’t read music or have little to no musical experience? If so, this book is for you! Instead of standard music notation, this method uses tablature combined with rhythmic symbols to make learning fast and easy! Topics covered include: parts of the bass guitar * tuning * basic hand and finger positions * interpreting chord symbols and musical charts * major, minor and pentatonic scales * arpeggios * easy-to-interpret diagrams, photos and illustrations * and much more! #24,199 in Books…
7. Walking Bass for Jazz and Blues: The Complete Walking Bass Method (2016)
A Walking Bass Method for BeginnersDiscover a Complete Method to Learn Jazz and Blues Walking Bass Have you tried playing walking bass lines but keep finding them not quite right?Do you find yourself thinking so much about note choice that you can’t get in the groove of the music?Do you dream of playing bass lines like legendary bassists like Ron Carter, Charles Mingus, Paul Chambers or Jaco?Walking Bass for Jazz and Blues is a complete method to help beginners master each element of Blues and Jazz walking bass. It is designed to develop strong harmonic skills, rhythm, phrasing and note…
8. Martin Taylor Walking Bass For Jazz Guitar: Learn to Masterfully Combine Jazz Chords with Walking Basslines (2018)
Combine Walking Basslines and Jazz Guitar Chords, with Martin Taylor MBEWalking Bass for Jazz Guitar distils over 40 years of virtuosity and skill into one beautiful jazz guitar book. Learn from the internationally acclaimed master of jazz chord melody guitar as he teaches you, step-by-step, how to play walking basslines on guitar and combine them with rock solid rhythm guitar chords.As a special bonus, 2 specially commissioned online videos are included, with Martin Taylor illustrating the secrets of walking basslines on jazz guitar.Walking Bass for Jazz Guitar: What You’ll Learn:The fundamental concepts of…
9. Bass Technique Finger Gym: Build stamina, coordination, dexterity and speed with essential bass exercises (2018)
Build and Master Essential Bass TechniqueThe Bass Technique Finger Gym is an instant ‘shot-in-the-arm’ for bass players of any level. It focuses on building a solid foundation of clean, usable, musical skills.Important, Effective ExercisesEach exercise is individually targeted to a common bass technique problem. You will work on timing, strength, fluency and speed, as well as getting an overview of slapping and popping.Solve Every Common Bass ProblemWhether you play rock, jazz, blues or funk, all bassists come up against the same pain points. The Bass Technique Finger…
10. First 50 Songs You Should Play On Bass (2016)
(Bass). If you’re new to the bass, you are probably eager to learn some songs. This book provides easy arrangements in tab with lyrics for the most popular songs bassists want to play. Includes: American Girl * Billie Jean * Blister in the Sun * Crossfire * Hey Joe * I Got You (I Feel Good) * Livin’ on a Prayer * Low Rider * Money * Monkey Wrench * My Generation * Paranoid * Peter Gunn * The Pink Panther * Roxanne * Should I Stay or Should I Go * Uptown Funk * What’s Going On * With or Without You * Yellow * and more! #24,488 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #2 in Bass Guitar…
11. First 15 Lessons – Bass Guitar: A Beginner’s Guide, Featuring Step-By-Step Lessons with Audio, Video, and Popular Songs! (2018)
(Guitar Educational). The First 15 Lessons series provides a step-by-step lesson plan for the absolute beginner, complete with audio tracks, video lessons, and real songs! Designed for self-teaching or for use with an instructor, you’ll build a solid foundation as you work through each lesson, learning the basics of the instrument and music reading while practicing the many exercises, concepts and song excerpts within. Must-know instruction so you can start playing right away, with a free online tuner and metronome! The bass guitar book features lessons on: bass fundamentals, music reading,…
12. Sight Reading Mastery for Bass Guitar (Sight Reading for Modern Instruments) (2014)
104 pages of limitless sight reading exercisesEfficient, detailed lessons on how to read music the right wayExtensive rhythm reading sectionOver 2 hours of audio to download for freeIn a modern world where we have instant access to guitar tablature, YouTube videos, slowdown software, lesson apps and midi, what is the value in learning to fluently read music on bass guitar? Sight reading music is an essential part of being able to communicate with other musicians in their own language. Professional musicians communicate with written music, and because very few other…
Best Bass Guitar Books: The Ultimate Collection
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Genesis and download some bass guitar books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
Bass Guitar for Dummies
Author(s): Patrick Pfeiffer
ID: 2563722, Publisher: , Year: 2020, Size: 24 Mb, Format: epub
Bass Guitar For Dummies
Author(s): Patrick Pfeiffer
ID: 2856962, Publisher: , Year: 2020, Size: 34 Mb, Format: pdf
Bass Guitar Exercises For Dummies
Author(s): Pfeiffer
ID: 2926076, Publisher: For Dummies, Year: 2020, Size: 11 Mb, Format: pdf
Please note that this booklist is not definite. Some books are truly best-sellers according to Washington Post, others are drafted by unknown writers. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant links you could recommend? Drop a comment if you have any feedback on the list.