How much would it matter?

By Jon Liebman
October 16, 2024

Like a lot of kids growing up in the ‘70s, I spent a lot of time in my bedroom, learning songs from records. Actual records – you know, with the turntable, tone arm, vinyl…

I was very into whatever music was popular at the time, so I learned a lot of classic rock songs — Led Zeppelin, Peter Frampton, Aerosmith… — both on guitar and on bass.

When I got into college, I started studying the upright bass, learning classical technique from Max Janowsky, a longtime member of the Detroit Symphony. I joined the orchestra at school and really enjoyed playing music by Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.

In order to really learn those parts, I thought it would be great practice along with recordings of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and other major orchestras. Might as well learn from the best, right?

That’s when I made a huge discovery.

As it turns out, the speed of my turntable was just a little bit slow, making the music play about a half-step too low. So that meant that all those years of learning songs from records, I was actually learning them in the wrong key!

It never occurred to me that it’s kind of weird for so many classic rock songs to be played in E-flat, or A-flat, or other “non-rock” keys. It didn’t even cross my mind. (DOH!)

As it turns out, it wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s actually a good thing, especially if you’re learning bass. 

As bass players, we have an advantage over every other instrument. The bass has a symmetry, a consistency that just doesn’t exist anywhere else. That’s because a bass is tuned in perfect fourths, all the way up and down. 

And that means that, generally speaking, if you can play something anywhere on the bass, you can pretty much play it everywhere on the bass. The finger configurations, the “shapes” on the fingerboard, are identical, no matter what “zip code” you’re in on the fretboard.

Check out this week’s video for some tips on how you can totally exploit this advantage and get some real benefit out of it, especially for those times you have to play a song in some unfamiliar or “weird” key.

After you watch it, leave a comment below and share your experience and your biggest takeaway from this lesson. I’d love to hear from you.

Let’s play bass!

Jon