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Stand-Alone Lessons.

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Where to start? · from Damian

There are tons of stand-alone lessons at BassEducation. Videos are organized by category and run from bite-sized 5–10min videos all the way up to 45min clinics on one specific topic.
I would suggest that most players start by checking out the Fundamentals Module or the Walking Bass Module
(Modules can also be found in the navigation menu).
As you start to have specific questions or get an idea of something you want to explore further, you can peruse the various sections of stand-alone lessons below.
As always, make use of access to me and the rest of the Community by asking questions — I’m in there daily and always respond to anything asked of the community!

General Mindset Practice Scales & Modes Arpeggios Rhythm Technique Reading Bass Lines Improvisation Play-Throughs

General

VIDEO

EQ FAQ

Download these handy EQ guides

VIDEO

How to Properly Set-Up & Adjust Your Gruv Gear Duo-Strap

By popular demand — but only if you own one of my Gruv Gear signature straps and have setup questions. For everyday strap setup, see my Strap Ergonomics FAQ.

VIDEO

Re-Stringing Guide

A walkthrough of how I restring my basses — the technique, the small habits that make a difference, and why the way you do it actually matters more than it gets credit for.

VIDEO

Strap Ergonomics FAQ

The questions I get all the time about strap height, material, and setup — and how the answers affect everything from your technique to your back.

VIDEO

Strings & Cables FAQ

Common questions on string choice, gauge, cable quality, and the little gear decisions that quietly shape your sound. The stuff that doesn’t get talked about as much as it should.

VIDEO

Tuning Tips & Tricks

The small tuning habits I wish someone had shown me earlier on — nothing fancy, just the things that quietly save you headaches once they become second nature.

Mindset

VIDEO

Perception Is Everything: You Are Not an Amateur

A meditation on perspective. How the way we see ourselves — beginner, amateur, working musician — quietly shapes what we’re able to learn, and how fast.

VIDEO

Path to Mastery

Some honest thoughts on what ‘mastery’ really looks like — and why the path is less a destination and more a way of working day to day.

VIDEO

Discovering Your Voice

What it actually means to ‘sound like yourself’ on the instrument — and how emulating the players you love is part of the path to your own voice, not a detour from it.

VIDEO

What Does It Take to Get Good?

The honest answer from somebody who’s been at it a while. Spoiler: it’s not magic and it’s not talent — but there’s still some good news in there.

VIDEO

Feeling Overwhelmed

What to do when the list of things you ‘should’ be working on starts to feel longer than your lifetime. How I prioritize, simplify, and keep showing up without trying to learn everything at once.

VIDEO

Managing Burnout

The reality of burnout for working musicians (and aspiring ones), and what’s helped me work through the stretches where I just didn’t want to pick up the bass.

VIDEO

Managing Burnout 2: Expectations VS Actual Intent

This was intended to just be an impromptu post in the community but it seemed like it might be useful (and might as well live here as well before getting buried in the feed over there). Forgive the spontaneous iPhone video vibe.

Practice

VIDEO

Creating a Lesson Plan

How to structure your own practice plans based on your goals.

VIDEO

Extended Range Basses: Making the Transition

How we use what we already know — patterns, intervals, the relationships we’ve internalized on 4 strings — and let those extend naturally onto 5, 6, or more. The goal isn’t relearning the bass, it’s making the new strings feel like home instead of a puzzle.

VIDEO

Fretless Practice & Approach

The intonation game and the technique habits fretless quietly forces on you. Plus how to embrace its organic, vocal quality — letting inflection become part of how you find your fretless voice.

VIDEO

How To Practice

The mindset and strategies that make practice time effective.

VIDEO

Transcription Tips

How to go about transcribing tunes — process and approach.

VIDEO

Transcribing Tips 2: Rhythmic Deductions

The follow-up to part 1, focused on the rhythm side of transcribing. How to identify and track meaningful subdivisions and groupings, so you can figure out what the rhythm actually is rather than guessing your way through it.

VIDEO

Turn Your Exercises into Music pt 1: Simple Harmony

The first step in making practice sound like music. When we treat everything we play as music, we’re practicing being musical as a way of being — here’s how to take your exercises and find the music already inside them.

VIDEO

Turn Your Exercises into Music pt 2: Through Changes

Now we take the same idea across moving chord changes — practicing the way you’ll need to play when you’re on the gig and not just hovering over one chord.

VIDEO

Re-Harmonization for the Rest of Us

Re-harm doesn’t need to be scary. 1) pick a simple melody 2) play around with different roots underneath the melody 3) experiment with different chord qualities 4) rinse & repeat (you’ll get better at it over time!)

Scales & Modes

VIDEO

10:11

Intervals Explained

What intervals are, how the naming conventions work and why they are so useful to think about.

VIDEO

14:56

Fretboard Awareness: Root Down

Learning to see scale tones from either side of your root for fretboard freedom.

VIDEO

14:36

Scales As The Alphabet

Why scales are important and useful (and not-so-useful) ways to approach them.

VIDEO

Major Scale 1

The major scale across the fretboard — the foundational shape every other scale relates to.

VIDEO

Major Scale 2

Expanding your major scale using broken intervals and double-stops.

VIDEO

Turning Scales Into Music

Practicing music-making while internalizing patterns and devices.

VIDEO

11:26

Internalizing Diatonic Relationships Using Chordal Grooves

Using simple chord shapes and rhythm to make music while practicing scales.

VIDEO

13:27

Modes of the Major Scale

Major scale modes — what they are and how to use them.

VIDEO

Pentatonics: Major & Minor Interchange

Exploring major and minor relationships within the pentatonic scale.

VIDEO

Chord Scales 1: What, Why & How

What are chord scales and why think about harmony this way.

VIDEO

Chord Scales 2: In Practice

Applying chord scales and incorporating them into practice.

VIDEO

Octatonic Scales: The Altered/Diminished Relationship Explained

Eight-note scales for altered dominants and diminished chords.

Arpeggios

VIDEO

Arpeggios & Inversions 1

What arpeggios are, how to build them, and what inversions mean.

VIDEO

Arpeggios & Inversions 2

Exploring arpeggios and inversions through chord changes.

VIDEO

Arpeggios & Inversions 3

Adding extensions (9, 11, 13) into arpeggios and inversions.

VIDEO

Why I Practice Chord Tones Out of Time

Practicing chord tones without a metronome or play-along.

VIDEO

Scales & Arpeggios to the 9

Introducing extensions into your patterns intentionally.

VIDEO

Scales & Arpeggios to the 13

Extended chord scales in 3rds across two octaves.

Rhythm

VIDEO

12 Tones & 12 Beats

The relationship between rhythm and harmony at a deeper level.

VIDEO

Rhythmic Sequences: Up & Down

A challenging way to take the rhythms that you already know and string them together to create new exercises.

VIDEO

Advanced Rhythmic Concepts Pt 1

Polyrhythms, metric modulation, advanced groove.

VIDEO

Rhythm Clinic: Practice Rhythm Like a Drummer

A long-form clinic tying everything together — think like a drummer about time and subdivision.

Technique

VIDEO

Articulations: Make It Sing

Your articulations are everything when it comes to taking a regular old bass line and really making it do something (without just adding notes or rhythms)

VIDEO

Control Your Tone with Your Plucking Hand

We have so much control over our tone just by virtue of how and where we pluck the strings. Learn to do more with your sound before you even think about turning a knob.

VIDEO

Developing Speed & Accuracy

While we don’t all need to be speed demons, having more technique than you need makes everything easier to play. This is how I worked on building that speed.

VIDEO

Finger Exercises

Building finger independence and strength on the fretboard.

VIDEO

Hand Position

Establishing the right left-hand position for efficient playing.

VIDEO

Harmonics: Artificial

Also called ‘pinch harmonics’ (usually by guitarists). Learn how to add this great sound to your arsenal.

VIDEO

Harmonics: Natural

Everybody loves harmonics and they can add so much spice to your lines (when used judiciously). They are also just a ton of fun to play!

VIDEO

Muting Techniques

Learn to further control your sound using a myriad of muting techniques for your plucking and fretting hands.

VIDEO

Plucking Hand Percussive Strikes

I use these ‘percussive strikes’ all too much (but they’re just so much fun!). I also find that they can really help me feel and vibe with a groove. A lot of folks asked about how I developed them so, here you go!

VIDEO

Synth Sound Emulation

A neat trick showed to me by Robert ‘Bubby’ Lewis and then again by Laurence Mollerup (who showed me what I was doing wrong). Very easy and very useful on certain gigs to get a synthier sound without any pedals!

VIDEO

3-Finger Plucking Exercise Using Chord Shapes

A quick peak at some of my ‘Right Hand Drive’ style techniques and how I practiced them using chord shapes as a tool.

VIDEO

3-Finger Plucking Exercise (RHD)

More Right Hand Drive style plucking exercises using the thumb. This one is a workout! (Daniel McGillicuddy)

Reading

VIDEO

Reading Notation (Clinic)

Long-form clinic on reading musical notation.

VIDEO

Reading Rhythms

Rhythm reading exercises and approaches.

VIDEO

Reading Lead Sheets pt 1: Roadmap Basics

Reading the basic 'road maps' of chord charts.

VIDEO

Reading Lead Sheets pt 2: Codas & More

Codas, repeats, and more advanced lead-sheet conventions.

VIDEO

Slash Chords: A Translation Guide

How to read and play slash chords.

Bass Lines

VIDEO

Approach Notes & Enclosures

What are approach notes and enclosures? I break them down here and talk about how to explore them on your own.

VIDEO

Groove Development pt 1

What’s going through my mind as I develop a bass line in real time.

VIDEO

Groove Development pt 2: Chord Tones & Ostinatos

Taking things a bit further by focusing on outlining chord tones and creating ostinatos (repeating patterns that help you sound more compositional in your approach)

VIDEO

Groove Development pt 3: The Shape of Your Dynamics

Using dynamics to really bring it all together and make it sing.

VIDEO

Walking Bass Overview

Here is a primer on my approach to walking bass lines. Check out the Walking Module to go much deeper and at a more relaxed pace

VIDEO

Transcription: 116th St (Lettuce)

Transcribing ‘116th St.’ in real time and showing you what my process looks like and how I perceive things and work them out.

VIDEO

Transcription: Put Love, Love, Love in It (John Stoddart)

A student asked about this tune so I transcribed a chunk of it and broke it down here. What a great track!

Improvisation

VIDEO

Soloing: Where to Start

Combating the ‘blank canvas’ reaction to soloing. Here’s how I think with regard to starting your solo, giving yourself something to work from, using space to create phrases and pacing yourself so you have somewhere to go.

VIDEO

The Importance of Silence

Without space we don’t have phrases and creating phrases are what a good solo is all about. This is a big part of ‘telling a story’ when you improvise.

VIDEO

Anatomy of a Groove Solo

Breaking down a groove solo of mine that got some love on social media. Here’s what I’m playing and what’s going through my head.

VIDEO

Singing & Playing

Often, our fingers get in the way of making music. We start playing the same patterns and just can’t seem to get away from that. Here’s how I use vocalization as a way to tap into the music that I want to hear.

VIDEO

Chord Tones & Ballads for Musicality

Choosing just a few scale tones to play through changes is a wonderful way to force ourselves to do more with less as well as a stellar way to challenge ourselves to find those notes on demand.

VIDEO

Major Lick in Shapes

Admittedly, this lick is a little daunting at first but a student heard me play it and asked me to break it down and I thought you might dig this. It’s also a great insight into the way I think about things (using both shapes and intervallic awareness as I play).

VIDEO

2 Chord Vamp Scalar Exercise

A phenomenal way to teach yourself to see the connecting threads through changes. This kind of exercise really helped me to play through changes and not just at them. This is a great primer video for the voice-leading lesson as well.

VIDEO

Voice Leading: Two Notes

Voice leading is basically the term for moving linearly through chord changes. Seeing how the note you’re currently playing relates to the next chord and moving by only whole or half steps to reflect an appropriate note for the next chord. This is how improvisors thread a line through changes without jumping around every time a chord changes. No matter where we are, we are either on or very near a great note choice for the next chord. (provided by Daniel McGillicuddy in his Bass Accumulations space within the community)

VIDEO

1 Chord, Endless Harmonic Possibilities

How I explore using various scales and approaches for any chord type. I’ll walk you through my thought process on how I might get away from playing the most basic version of a scale and wind up at (sometimes seemingly disparate) scale choices for a chord type.

VIDEO

Getting in and Out of Solos

For many of us, the hardest part of any solo is how to start and how to end. Here is how I try and think about things when I get ‘the nod’ from someone on stage.

VIDEO

Harmonic Substitutions pt 1: Quick & Easy Subs

Some fairly quick and easy ways to explore playing over chords from places other than the root and implying different types of harmony (without hurting your brain).

VIDEO

Harmonic Substitutions pt 2: Going Further, a Melodic Minor Primer

Taking things a step further and beginning to break out of our major scale harmony.

Play-Throughs

VIDEO

Beatrice Play Through

I play through the standard ‘Beatrice’ and then walk you through what I’m thinking and playing, step by step.

VIDEO

17:31

Beautiful Love Play-Through: Walking & Improvisation

I walk and solo through the form on Beautiful Love and then give a little breakdown of what I'm thinking as I play.

VIDEO

Stella By Starlight playthrough

I play through the standard ‘Stella By Starlight’ and then walk you through what I’m thinking and playing, step by step.

Looking for something different?

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Modules

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Learning Paths

Curated multi-section roadmaps for the freelancer, the jazz player, the soloist.

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Practice with the band

Play-Alongs

Backing tracks, charts, and stems for jamming and shedding.

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