Before we get into the problem....can YOU play this?

Here's a section from Song 50 of the 50 SONGS LEVEL 1 program. This song is called The Saw Her Standing Blues and it's a rock and roll style line played with a 12 bar blues style progression at a tempo of 170 BPM:

If You Can...

...then you can close this page and go about your day.

If you can't though, it's almost certainly down to one of the following 5 reasons:

1. Your plucking hand technique isn't up to the tempo.
2. Your fretting hand technique isn't up to the tempo.
3. There's a problem with executing the rhythm.
4. You can play this, but your 'time feel' is just....off.
5. You are playing note by note....and note understanding the discrete pieces of vocabulary that are being used in each bar. To use the metaphor of music as a language, you're trying to speak letters instead of words.

It's not your fault though...

Because When The Bass Guitar Was Invented...

...the problems it solved were:

• A more portable version of the double bass.
• An instrument that doubled the function of upright bass, but was easier to connect to amplification.
• This meant the bass guitar could be louder in venues. And it was easier to record.

So it wasn't invented to create a new class of musicians. It was invented to make the working life of musicians who could already play easier!

One of the things I like to tell students looking for answers to specific bass guitar problems is this: all roads on the bass lead back to Jamerson and McCartney.

Jamerson originally learned to play upright bass. And McCartney was a piano player/guitarist who got handed the role of bass when a previous player left.

And that first generation of bass players - who STILL influence us today - learned to play on other instruments and translated that knowledge to OUR instrument!

Sidebar: both Jamerson and McCartney would go on to develop their playing, and both transcend and redefine what was originally thought possible on the bass guitar.

It's interesting to note where each of those players took their primary influences though:

• Jamerson was a jazz and blues player.
• McCartney learned his early bass lines from blues, rock and roll and country. (And then from Jamerson!)

There was no 'comprehensive' method for bass players at this point in time. (There still isn't). The first school to teach bass guitar was Berklee School Of Music. In 1973. And I don't know if this was the case back then, but I played with a piano player who did the three year Berklee course in two years back in the 90s....and he was a pretty advanced player before he went to Berklee.

So for beginners. Or musicians wanting to pick up the bass....there was no organized curriculum that covered all the musical elements that beginners needed to learn from and progress.

Just as importantly...there was no organized curriculum that bass players supplementing their income with teaching could use to make sure their students were getting a rounded bass education with no holes in it!

That persists to this day.

Students - just like you - learn (poorly) in the following ways:

• From YouTube videos
• From private teachers ignorant of the rich history of the bass. (Guitar teachers...I'm looking at you.)
• By learning bits and pieces from other bass players they know.
• By learning random songs...but ONLY learning the notes of the songs. Not learning the vocabulary that they could use in hundreds of other songs.

And just about no-one teaches how to put good, functional lines together. Even from basic vocabulary.

There already is a better teaching and learning method for musicians.

A method that can be modelled for bass guitar (for blues, rock and pop players) and has been road tested for over 200 years. And yep, I'm talking about classical piano, or violin. Or similar.

Here's a screen grab of an answer I got from one of the better AI large language models around. The Question I asked was: summarize the classical music learning method. Here's the answer:

Over the last year I've been putting together a program for Bass Guitar that takes this approach and guides a beginner bass player to a decent intermediate level.

Note: playing the kind of line at the top of the page - 8th notes at 170 BPM - is a decent intermediate level in my book. If you can play at this level, your equipped to get through most 'jam' style situations in blues, rock, pop and country.

This program - which is called 50 SONGS LEVEL 1 - will be complete by the end of December 2024. At the moment I've got 47 of the 50 songs created, the majority of the supporting info, and just need to add the most important section of the program: how you create your own bass lines from the foundational information you've been taught.

Let me give you a quick demo of how the program works. First up, let's take an example section from a song. This is the 'verse' of Song #29 which is called The Funky Grapevine:

This song was composed to be a practical illustration of the following teaching points:

• The R-5-8 and 8-5-R device.
• Raking through strings when playing the 8-5-R descending version of the device.
• Combining specific 8th note rhythms.
• An 8th note rhythm that is 'new' to the student going through this teaching path.

Plus there are supporting exercises that help with the demands of this practice song. Plucking hand exercises. Rhythm exercises. And there are MP3 tracks to download as well as Band In A Box files you can use in your practice space IF you have that program.

I've been teaching bass online since 2009. In the last three years I've been turning my years of unique teaching into books on Amazon - here's a screenshot of just 15 of them (at time of writing I have 25 and #26 and #27 are both due for release soon):

The easiest way to check out if I know what I'm talking about is to head to Amazon.com and check out my most popular book LEARNING FROM JAMES JAMERSON VOLUME 1 and read the reviews. Here are a couple of screenshots of reviews I really like:

Of course there are the odd 1* and 2** reviews too! But if you read the main 1* review that Amazon shows you, and then read the sample of the book, you'll quickly come to same conclusion that I did: that Amazon user "CURRENT RESIDENT" doesn't understand simple English.

Anyway....the point is that I'm closing in on combined sales of 20,000 books....and you can find my Author Profile on Amazon and read reviews at random on different books to get a feel for what bass students like you think about working with my teaching material.

50 SONGS LEVEL 1 is created using sequential learning.

That means every lesson, and every part of each lesson, is a stepping stone. And those stepping stones form a path from starting out and playing a simple ballad line in half notes for Song #1, the the constant 8th note bass line at 170 BPM that you heard in Song #50.

Along the way you'll also learn:

• The 10 most common pieces of vocabulary used in bass lines by James Jamerson, Paul McCartney, Geddy Lee and all the other greats of bass. You almost certainly know some of these...but don't know that you know them. And probably don't know the specific chordal situations they should be used in.
• Rhythm Theory. Quarter notes and straight 8th note rhythms and rest. And combining rhythms with the pieces of common vocabulary.
• To work on your internal clock. Each song or song section that you learn can then be repurposed for 'Time And Groove' exercises. Where you have to rely on YOUR sense of time to get through the increasing amounts of space in the practice tracks.
• How to create your own bass lines using the basic devices and rhythms that you've learned using a process called Deliberate Composition.
• The music theory that you need to create bass lines....although you need to understand how scales are formed, they are not necessary to create bass lines.
• How to 'fix' a hole in your technique once it's been identified - and how to practice so that you're always getting better.
• Plus the composed bass lines that serve as practical applications of the theoretical material are all based on real world chord progressions and genre styles....so you'll learn and practice ideas that you can use in other bass lines!

• From Lesson 2 or 3, each subsequent lesson starts with a review of what was learned in the previous lesson.
• Each lesson introduces two or three new concepts.
• These new concepts are taught with 'real world' style examples. That's real world progressions, real world 'band styles' on the MP3 practice tracks (as well as slower, chordal metronome tracks) and real world bass line ideas using the pitches and rhythms learned.
• From Lesson 9 longer, song style, exercises are introduced. These are based on chords of well known songs, but often explored in multiple key centres.
• Each exercise has its own practice tracks that go from 60 BPM or 80 BPM through to 120 or 140 BM. So you can use those practice tracks to create a tempo sequence.

One of the big problems in most education - not just bass education - is avoided by careful sequencing. That problem is starting out basic and then suddenly jumping to a level that throws the student out of the course. By parceling out new ideas....the stuent can progress at a constant and consistent rate.

Although this program was designed for beginners to hit the ground running...it's invaluable for bass players who can play a bit, but who are stuck.

If for example, you've looked at Song #50 above and decided it's way out of your league...that's a good thing. You can enroll on the course below, and start at say Song #10. If you can play Song 10, double check you know the musical elements that have been taught (rhythm/devices etc) and then move to say Song #15.

Repeat the process. Can you play this....if not, then drop back to a song that's at the edge of your ability level and move forward from there. If you can, go forwards to Song #20 and try that.

Most of the guys and girls who've already joined find that their ceiling is around the Song #30 to Song #35 mark...and then their job is to identify what's holding them back and work on that.

The only way that you will make progress is to practice musical things that you can't already play. Each song in this program presents a greater musical challenge than the song before. And you can use the sequence like a staircase to ascend to Intermediate Level.

50 SONGS LEVEL 1 is housed in its own space on the 8020bass.com website and uses a unique combination of video, music graphics, PDFs, MP3 practice tracks and Band In A Box files to support the sequential learning in the program:

If I were teaching this as a one on one study method with individual students, the full course would encompass around 150 Lessons.

A decent bass teacher these days costs around $50 a lesson. The good ones are north of $150 a lesson. The really good ones are double that.

150 Lessons at $50 a lesson would be aorund 7.5K if my maths is correct!

Lets say though that - as mentioned earlier - you're not a beginner but you can play a bit but need to correct some holes in knowledge and technique before advancing and you'd only need 75 lessons.

That's still not much change from $4K!

This program isn't even a 20th of that...

NOTE: for Black Friday to Cyber Monday...this is $127. Click the Yellow Button below to check out on the enrollment page and you'll see the enrollment is $127.

To give a complete overview with everything you need, these additional items are also included:

1. Online version of my book FRETBOARD MASTERY. (Value $22.50) A comprehensive set of exercises to help you master the fretboard. Level 1 is where most teachers stop - Levels 2, 3 and 4 are the most musical and interesting. Master these and you'll whizz around the fretboard.

2. Technique Builders. (Value $75). A collection of approximately 60 lessons based on fretting hand, plucking hand and rhythmic units to practice.

3. 25 Bass Lines In 80-20 Format.  (Value $50) As you'll read below I'm the only teacher whose spent a decade transcribing and analysing hundreds of songs to find the commonly repeated vocabulary in bass lines...and then codifying those pieces of vocabulary. Here are the bass lines to 25 songs in my proprietary 80-20 Format so you can SEE the bass lines with the devices clearly annotated and see how other bass players used the ideas you're going to learn.

4. 72 MOGG Files. If you don't know what a MOGG file is...you'll be pleasantly surprised playing around with these files. Just don't let them replace your practice time.

5. The 80-20 Device Method Course (Value $177) This was the first iteration of what's become this course...but it was just too focused on teaching devices. And not enough on songs. But it makes a perfect compliment to 50 SONGS LEVEL 1 and gives more detail on specific devices if you need that.

There are two musical elements that are unique to this program that - to my knowledge - no-one else teaches.

The first is the 'devices.' I've spent over 10 years transcribing and analysing bass lines - ranging from Jamerson to McCartney to Geddy to Rocco to JPJ to Carl Radle to Tommy Shannon to Duck...the list goes on. And on.

And the focus of that analysis was looking for the commonly used pieces of vocabulary that all these players use in their bass lines. When you look at bass lines through this lens, it's a much smaller number than you might think.

That's the deconstruction part of the process.

Being able to take that information and use it to create bass lines is the second musical element no one else teaches. Most bass creation advice falls into these categories:

• Play what you feel man.
• Take this pattern and play it in different keys. And add some variations.

But composing bass lines can be taught as a process freed from the tyranny of tempo. That process is called Deliberate Composition....once you start using it to create your own bass  lines you'll be amazed. (You can also find the mistakes in other people's lines and fix them/make them better. That's pretty cool too.)

If you don't know the common vocabulary that bass players use, and don't know how to use it to create your own lines....this will be one of the best investments in your bass playing you make!

And by the way....if you have got a library of transcriptions and want to do this deconstruction/reconstruction work yourself to save money....you'll still require an investment of time. My estimate: 200 hours. Even if it was just 10 hours(you couldn't analyse 100 songs in 10 hours btw)...what do you value your 10 hours at? $150 (minimum wage)? $500 (a low level contractor)? $1000 (10 hours of legal work). Seriously, this program will save you so much time.

If you've got any questions....  drop me an email and ask away. I'd rather you were 100% sure BEFORE you enroll. And if it's not for you, I'll tell you.