I started playing bass about five years ago now. At the time, I had been playing ukulele for about eleven years, and had amassed a collection of several hundred songs. Now it was time to relearn those songs for the bass.
As in the photo above, my first bass was a Gold Tone microbass, which is basically a large bass ukulele. It’s easy to play and has an amazing sound. After just six days of practice, I was playing this thing at my usual weekly jam, and did okay. I learned quickly how important the bass is in any jam environment. As bass player, although you must follow the lead singer, everyone else in the group depends on you. You really don’t have to be too fancy. In many respects, the bass player is the metronome for the group.
The first song I tried was one of my favorite jam songs, “Coming Into Los Angeles” by Arlo Guthrie. Although I did eventually master this song, I quickly realized that I needed to start with some easier songs first. One big problem was learning how to sing while playing bass. At first, I just couldn’t find the right vocal line.
I then went with a fun song, “I’m The Urban Spaceman” by Neil Innes and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. I did this in the key of G major using just the A and D strings. I used easy 1-5 and 1-3 patterns with walks up or down at the chord changes. I still often do this song in my regular jams since it offers other musicians solo opportunities during the instrumental breaks.
I continued my initial learning explorations with some more three or four chord songs. I always liked “Down By The Henry Moore” by Murray McLauchlan since it’s one of the few songs about Toronto, a city I lived in for 29 years. “Dead Skunk” by Loudon Wainwright III is a fun and easy three chord song.
“Walkin’ Down The Line” and “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” are a couple of easy songs written by Bob Dylan in the 1960’s. In his early days, Dylan had a talent of writing songs that seemed timeless. In particular, “Walkin’ Down The Line” could have been written by Woody Guthrie decades earlier.
I’ll continue exploring my core repertoire in subsequent posts, but I’ll end this initial list with a really fun three chord song, “Stop Stop Stop” by the Hollies. This one is always a favorite with my Wednesday morning ukulele jam in Gananoque, partly because the verse uses just one chord. The trick is that a 7th chord is used in the verse instead of the usual major chord, giving the song an exotic flavor.