A bass player – for starters – should follow the drum – the kick drum to be exact. The bass player should play the same thing throughout the song. The bass player should not start playing ‘lead’. The bass player should play at a relatively constant volume. The bass player should transition between sections and not rob the stage from the singer or lead guitar player.

Of course, if you are playing funk or metal funk, these rules don’t apply. Or ever types of jazz.
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When learning to paly something with a higher/lower tension, your muscles need to learn how strong they need to pick the strings. So the technique is ALL the same, but the strumming/picking is different and CAN ONLY be learned through playing.

Its like learning a new song, you should have it down in about an hour.
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17 years old. 10+ years of experience. i’ve learned 14 songs in one day..memorized completely. "protoge"

This is a simplified answer, but bass is just the last 4 strings of acoustic guitar…the G-D-A-and low E.

The last 4 strings of bass are the exact tuning of the last 4 strings of your acoustic guitar, so anything you can play on acoustic, can be transferred to bass. So, you’re off to a good start.
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47 years of guitar

hope i helped

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091021113514AAWePWU
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If you know some guitar, bass isn’t that hard to pick up. Its almost an intuitive instrument. Meaning you can almost right away pluck away melodies by ear. For sure you don’t have to deal with chord shapes like you do with guitar since one doesn’t normally strum a bass. That written, its a good idea to learn how to build chords on the bass. By that I mean instead of struming a guitar so that all the chord’s notes ring simultaneously, if you pluck out the chord’s notes one at a time it’ll make the bassline to a particular song you’re playing a lot more supportive & give it depth than if you just played root, root, root notes.
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bassist

Funk bass is a whole new thing altogether, nothing like strumming an acoustic guitar, popping and slapping is the name of the technique and it involves wacking one string with the outside edge of your thumb on the downstroke – which is the ’slap’ – then really quickly sort of catching the other string with your forefinger on the upstroke which is the ‘pop’ , you need to get it so you dont catch it too tight, but just loose enough to let your finger come away from it without catching,

Anyway wont bore you too much with the details, but the bass guitar is very different from an acoustic, and you may find when you get used to playing one it feels wierd and unfamiliar when you play the other….on an acoustic you’ll be playing a lot of chords which are a sequence of strings, different notes that you strum together that harmonise with eachother to make a chord, and the bass you dont play chords, just single strings, which are much thicker, and at first it will tire the muscles in your hands and fingers
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amateur (very) musician of 12 years

E-0—————–
B-2—————–
G-2—————–
D-2—————–
A-x——————
E-x——————

That is an A chord. You place your fingers on fret two on the strings DGB and when you strum you only play the bottom four strings DGBE. The X means don’t strum and 0 means open string (you strum without holding your fingers on any frets on that string.)

Bass is similar to guitar but a lot easier to some degree because you play individual notes. Tab is the same. The notes (in standard tuning) are EADG and pretty much the same number or frets too. You just tend to play one string at a time though due to the thickness of the strings and the low frequency of the notes.

I reccomend you play guitar and try funk first within that seeing as it’s a style (you could play it on any guitar acoustic or electric.) Play to songs you like and just play what you feel. If you want to extend yourself and better your knowledge youtube has plenty of music teachers for free (Walt Ribiero is good) or you could get some lessons elsewhere.

Best wishes!
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