Bass Guitar for Dummies (For Dummies Series)

This is the most comprehensive book on the bass. Great accompanying online material. Incorporates lots of music basics that are useful. The author is an accomplished bassist. His comments and opinions add value. I’m working my way through it and making great progress.

I'm still reading but it does appear to be a good study.

The best bass tutorial for a beginner that I’ve found, BUT there’s a lot of material here and most of it is glossed over. If you take the time to go through each chapter and explore the concepts on your own, outside of just the book, you’ll have a solid foundation of knowledge to build on. The author is a strong proponent of the one finger per fret method, and that’s generally a good thing as it’s considered the proper way, but it can be hard to get used to at first. Especially if you’ve been trying to learn on your own. Also, most of the tabs that you find on the internet aren’t tabbed with 1F/F in mind. When you find a song you want to practice, you might have to rework it yourself to better fit a 1F/F format. Honestly though, that can be a useful exercise in itself. Unless of course you like playing on only 2 strings and constantly shifting up and down the neck. My only complaints, and the reason I can’t give it 5 stars, is the font is very small and the paper is super thin and flimsy. Be prepared to squint and watch out for torn pages.

Good explanation of learning to playing the Bass guitar if you're new to it. I wish this book was out in 2004 when i got interested in learning to play the Bass guitar.

Bought this for a friend who is already a bassist. Why? Because he has always wanted to be able to read music. For decades he would just copy through listening or reading tabs. Which is fine, but he wanted to be able to expand past that where he could pick up any sheet music and be able to read it for playing. This book is a great start. Hilarious title, but actually very useful book.

The author of this book writes in a way that makes it feel like he is in the room with you. I picked up way more from his teachings over the course of a few days compared to all of the other books I have read. No joke, my playing has gone from mechanical to musical over a couple of weeks. I actually now have the ability to make my bass make any sound I want. People tell me my rhythm has improved immensely and the overall sound is light years from what I was doing. I am no longer thinking so much and am actually finding the ways to complement whatever music I'm accompanying. Bach to the Rock, it all works now. It really helped me, maybe it can help you.

I have two things to say about the book, one regarding its content and one regarding Mr. Pfeifer. In regards to the content, I think this is generally an excellent intro book with a couple of slight criticisms. I do think the pairing of exercises and examples could have been done a little better. The videos are very useful and the audio corresponds to the exercises, but sometimes the call-outs in the book could be more explicit. Given that this was a multimedia product, I just feel like the different platforms could have been better aligned and more seamlessly integrated. However, overall it's more of an irritant than anything else. I also wonder about the difficulty curve in the book I've played guitar for fifteen years and mandolin for ten, so I'm coming to the book with a good deal of experience both in terms of theory as well as just playing with other people and having hands that are used to playing stringed instruments. I enjoyed the pacing because I picked the basics up almost immediately, however, I don wonder if perhaps the book may be a bit too accelerated for someone with absolutely no experience playing musical instruments of any kind. As such, I think my strongest recommendation for this book would be for people who may be coming to bass from another instrument, preferably a stringed instrument. That said, the breadth of coverage with regard to styles is excellent. I also love how well the book focuses on "why" and "how" musical ideas are created on the bass, rather than just throwing out scales, riffs, and grooves to memorize and leaving it at that. To sum it up, this is a challenging book for a beginner, but I mean that in a good way. It asks a lot out of the reader/student, but it also offers a lot. In regards to Mr. Pfeifer, I just want to mention that recently the website for this book was down for nearly a week. I called Wiley twice and got polite customer service folks that nonetheless were unaware of the problem and were unable to offer me any solution or let me know how long the site may be down or why it was even gone. I finally emailed Mr. Pfeifer and he responded within twenty four hours. A few hours later he had a back-up URL for me where the online content could also be found. A day later he let me know the responses he was getting from Wiley. Having spent some time in publishing, I really appreciate that level of engagement from an author. He could have easily thanked me for my interest and suggested I contact Wiley. The level of personal involvement he displayed is highly commendable and much appreciated. The guy definitely comes across as a true professional who cares about his product and his readers.

Love this book! I learned so much about music theory and bass playing which would have cost me thousands of dollars if I had taken formal lessons or college courses; it is definitely a great manual for beginners or even advanced players who need to be schooled in the area of music theory or to just understand why they play what they play. The author keeps the reader engaged with his sense of humor and his knowledge, which he breaks down into baby-steps for us beginners. I love the endless bass lines and examples which are priceless. He has made my playing bass less intimidating, plus he has helped me improve and I am inspired to play more than ever!

Great book, received it more quickly than I thought I would, in perfect condition. Everything is accessible, no harsh reading at all. I already have good knowledge of music theory since I’ve been playing piano and guitar for quite a few years now, but being new to electric bass, this book allow me to get a good start. The fact that every chapter is independent is great, for I can skip those talking of subjects I already know well without getting lost. I recommend it, same for the seller. Thanks !

Really good guide to use in conjunction with lesson books as explains terms well. Have looked up a lot of terms and theories. It does what the title says!

Use este libro para recorder todo lo que olvide atraves de Los años sin tocar el bajo. Excelente para empesar a tocar o revisar.

This book (and the accompanying videos) has become one of my three primary resources for learning bass. It was a great help with getting set up, finger drills and conditioning, scales, and progressing. Mr. Pfeiffer's writing style is entertaining and keeps the reader's interest. The videos are more straightforward and do an excellent job of demonstrating the material. I am very glad I purchased this and do not hesitate to recommend it.

I was looking at several books that might help me in self-teaching bass playing. I ended up settling in this one because it offered some online content, such as tablatures and videos. All other books I was looking at shipped with a CD (honestly that's a joke nowadays). Anyway, I was not disappointed, as an absolute beginner the book offered various essential tips to get started. I'm not a fluent player yet, I'm advancing slowly. But I feel that the book will also be useful at later stages when I get more familiar with the mechanics of playing the bass. I wholeheartedly recommend this, the direction I see for improvement is making more helper content available online.