This week we’re looking at classical study pieces and how they’re great for developing your bass guitar technique. We’ll be looking at the opening few bars of the Violin Partita No.3 In E Major by J.S.Bach and how you should approach the various technical hurdles.
Get Yourself A Study Piece!
Classical pieces are great study pieces for bass guitar because they’re usually going to be written for another instrument like harpsichord or piano or violin or cello. So they’re not very ‘bass like’ in their writing.
The pieces don’t sit as naturally on the instrument so they’re great for pushing your technique. They also sound great and you can take pleasure in learning a beautiful solo piece on bass guitar rather than regular old bass lines.
Check out my recordings of Solfeggietto and Prelude From Cello Suite No.1 in G Major
Violin Partita No.3 In E major
In this lesson we’re going to break down the opening few bars of the Violin Partita No.3 by J.S.Bach:
For those of you with 20 fret basses, you can play the opening line as follows:
Great piece – and not too difficult; are you going to cover the remainder of the piece at some stage?
I really enjoy the movements of classical music on Bass guitar. This is not a super hard piece to lean and practice and it really works the fingers just right.
Thoroughly enjoyed this. The transcript has the piece finishing on Eb, 20th fret. It finishes on E. Or is it me?
It’s missing the final E in the transcription. I noticed the same thing.
Thank you Mark.
I personally really enjoy classical especially Bach.
Can we get the tabs?
Brilliant.!! I love the tune. Great practice for swift position shifts too. Some of Jacos’s melodic elements/methods can also help nail these kind of pieces quicker. Great stuff.!!!!
Hey man great work! I explore a lot of these pedal point type lines in my book Bach Shapes II for bass clef. Check it out if you get a chance! bachshapes.com.