Free Bass Lesson - Using Rests for Better Basslines

Rockschool releases a free bass guitar tutorial that can help students understand the role of rests in building grooves.

This lesson will put the saying "what you don’t play is as important as what you do" into action, showcasing the importance of rest in music.

Rockschool designed this lesson to demonstrate that tastefully leaving space between notes can help produce stronger musical parts for bass, and any other instrument for that matter.

The lesson is quick and straight to the point, you have four different tabbed examples of how to approach two backing tracks. These examples demonstrate the effect of introducing rests to basslines.

This free bass tutorial comes with a free video demonstration, a backing track and a sheet music in PDF format, which are all available to download on the Rockschool news page. The video demonstration is also uploaded on YouTube, as shown below for convenient streaming. You can get the tabs and the entire lesson by visiting Rockschool.

Rockschool also recommend tracks from James Brown, The Rolling Stones and Pantera for further listening. These tracks demonstrate similar bass parts to the example used on the lesson, and shows how the rests are put into good use in real-world songs.

Rockschool is known for their accredited graded lessons, providing rock and pop exams, vocational qualifications and even diplomas on specific instruments. They also offer other tutorials and lessons including quick study pieces, technical exercises, practice material and even sight-reading tests.

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