Guitar world

Learn how to play the bass guitar notes

This post is aimed at helping the beginner bass guitar player to learn the notes of the bass guitar. If you want to play bass guitar you will need to know the names of seven notes and their places on the bass guitar fretboard. Once you know where the notes are you will automatically know where the sharps and flats are located. Playing bass is an easy to learn skill from a technical point of view. After all, for the bass guitar you do not need to learn chords. At least not at the start. While you are learning the notes on the fretboard you could start right away on learning the bass parts to some of your favorite songs from tabs. The big task ahead of you is getting the ability to take your place as a part of the group you are in. Learning the notes is a start, learning them so that you so not have to think about them takes time and practice.

Here are the notes as they appear on the bass guitar fretboard:

G|—G#—|—A—|—A#—|—B—|—C—|—C#—|—D—|—D#—|—E—|—F—|

D|—D#—|—E—|—F—|—F#–|—G—|—G#—|—A—|—A#—|—B—-|—C—|

A|—A#—|—B—|—C—|—C#–|—D—|—D#—|—E—|—F—-|—F#—|—G—|

E|—F—-|—F#–|—G—|—G#–|—A—|—A#—|—B—|—C—-|—C#—|—D—|

You will notice that I have written the sharp symbol (#) on the diagram of the bass fretboard. You probably already know that one man’s sharp is another man’s flat according to which key the song is in. For instance F# could also be called Gb (G flat) because it is both the note above F and the note below G. Easy to understand but complicated to explain.

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