Easy Bass Guitar Chords For Beginners (+Tips & Tricks)

A few chords go a long way.

When you first start out on the bass, you’ll struggle to learn many chords.

Luckily, you can do a whole lot with only a few of them.

But which chords should you learn first on bass?

The five easy bass guitar chords below are a good start for any beginning bassist.

Not only are the highly useful, they are also a great way to practice fretting on bass.

Keep reading for my list of bass chords every beginner should learn. I’ve also got some helpful tips and tricks after the chords, to help you learn to play them faster and better.

 

Easy Bass Guitar Chords For Beginners

Before I get to the actual rundown of easy bass guitar chords I recommend beginners learn, I want to briefly go over what a bass chord actually is, because it does differ somewhat from a guitar chord.

 

What Is A Bass Chord?

Just like guitar chords, bass chords are groups of at least two notes meant to be played simultaneously. Think of them as bass scales, but you’re supposed to play everything at once, rather than note by note.

Standard bass guitars have fewer strings than a guitar, but more importantly, they have access to fewer notes. This means that you can’t simply copy a guitar chord, slap it on a bass, and think it will sound the same.

Bass chords are composed slightly differently, but they share quite a lot in common with guitar chords. There are open, major, minor, and movable chords, as well as their inverted counterparts, and so on. And you can also combine them in chord progressions.

Now that you have an elementary understanding of what a bass chord is, I want to recommend a few bass guitar basic chords that all bass players should know. Everything below is in standard bass guitar tuning (EADG)

 

E Power Chord

Power chords are arguably the simplest chords on any instrument. They sound powerful, especially when used in heavy riffs and licks, hence the name.

The reason the E power chord will be a staple in your arsenal is that it’s a perfect opener and closer at the same time. If you’re covering songs, you’ll play it in quite a few intros. In fact, you’ll end songs in this chord more often than you won’t.

The composition of this bass chord is easy to memorize. The low E is open, and all you have to do is fret the “B” on the second fret of the A string.

For an even grander effect, add the octave to the root note by fretting the E2 (2nd fret on the D string). This way, the chord becomes much heavier, but I don’t recommend using it if your tone is full of gain and/or heavy distortion.

 

A Minor

The very first chord I learned how to play on my guitar was the A Minor. Since it uses the B string, which 4-string bass guitars lack, it’s much harder to pull off on bass. That’s mainly because you’ll have to fret more strings than usual.

Think of it this way. The A Minor bass chord requires you to shift your strings up by two and a half semitones, as if your first string was A and the last string was B.

If you’re a beginning bass player, you could simply place a capo on the fifth fret of your bass guitar and then fret the E and A notes with two fingers.

Without a capo, the easiest way to fret the A Minor chord is to place a bar over the A and C notes (5th fret) with your index finger, and then fret the E and A with your middle and ring fingers.

You’ll get to use this chord in more ballads than I can count, with some of the most prominent being Still Got the Blues by Gary Moore, Otherside by Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Lovesong by The Cure, and many others.

 

A Major

If you want to learn how to play happy music, you’ll need a few major chords in your pocket. The A Major chord is fairly fun to play. More importantly, it’s easier to fret than, say, A Minor.

In my experience, I rarely got to use the full A Major. When playing in cover bands that did Iron Maiden, Megadeth, and Metallica songs, I mostly used the A and C# parts, while making subtle accents with the top E.

This way, you’ll be able to sync with the guitar, create a solid foundation that doesn’t overwhelm the mix, and still have plenty of headroom to add notes that fit well.

Since the A Major chord is remarkably popular in pop and virtually all styles of rock music, there might be instances where you could get away with playing it in full, especially if your volume isn’t too high and you’re not using any pedals to modify your tone.

 

Dominant 7th A Chord

Often called the “Dom7 A”, the Dominant 7th A Chord is considerably more difficult to pronounce than it is to play. All you have to do is place your middle finger on the G#, place a bar over the C and top A#, and fret the E with your index finger to play the Dom7 A chord.

This is an ideal chord for practicing your finger dexterity and agility. You probably won’t find too many songs where it will be used in its entirety, unless you’re playing fusion jazz or avant-garde metal, but its pieces can be very useful in every other scenario.

When all the notes are played simultaneously, the sound is quite dark, but if you play only the C and B (in which case this could hardly pass as a Major A), you’ll have a chord on which nearly all heavy and power metal bands based their careers.

I love to experiment by switching up the positions of this chord, especially when creating new music, to see which combination will give me the best foundation for the guitar work. By moving the A# to A, the otherwise dark and gloomy nature of this chord becomes tamer and far more flexible to work with.

As for the reason I’d recommend such an unorthodox chord to beginners, it’s easy to play and even easier to practice on. By learning how to pull this chord off, you’ll simultaneously work on your fretting speed, precision, and reach. Not to mention that you’ll get to deploy the “bar chords” that many people think aren’t all that useful.

 

C Major 7th

The C Major 7th is a great-sounding bass chord that consists of two inverted power chords: the C and E, and the G and B pairs. Learning this specific chord unlocked a world of possibilities for me. It helped me better understand the relationships between notes, and how parts of different chords can be used to craft even better new ones.

At first glance, the C Major 7th may seem difficult to pull off. After all, you’ll have to stretch your fingers at least four frets apart. But it all becomes much easier when you break down the chord into the two aforementioned pairs.

The way I learned to play this chord is quite simple. I practiced fretting C and E with my little and ring fingers, and then I practiced pressing G and B with my middle and index fingers. After that, it’s all about putting the pieces together.

Unlike other chords, this one is not nearly as gloomy as the Dom 7 A, melancholic as A Minor, or joyful as the A Major. To my ears, C Major 7th is a mix of them all.

Not only is this chord ideal for practicing finger reach and fretting accuracy, but it’s also quite fun to put in songs when you’re out of licks. You could place it in the middle of a verse or at the end a song. Break it up, and you’ll have an interesting arpeggiated scale to practice on.

 

Bass Chord Tips & Tricks

This section has a few tips that will help you learn and play bass chords. These are things I learned along the way and wish I had known when I first started. They will help you get better at playing the bass.

 

Learn Where Chords Begin And End

Understanding the relationship of notes in any given chord will allow you to choose which parts of it you’ll use in any given setting. Since bass chords don’t sound as smooth as guitar chords when you play all four notes at the same time, the tone coming off of your chord can sometimes overwhelm the guitar and vocals, or even the drums.

That’s why the first thing you should do is learn where chords begin and end. If you’ve just joined a band that plays original songs, and the guitarist tells you to play the A Chord, you’ll buy yourself time to make licks and fills on the fly by simply rolling with the A note in the right tempo.

By knowing where each bass chord ends, you’ll know where to draw the limit to your creativity. This is mainly important for cover songs, because it will help to keep you from straying too far from the original riffs.

 

Break Chords Down Into Smaller Bits

Learning how to play the entire chord right off the bat is the harder way of doing it. As I mentioned earlier, chopping chords down into smaller bits helped me learn how to play the main notes much faster.

Take the C Major 7th for example. I don’t expect many beginners will be able to play this chord immediately after picking up a bass guitar, but anyone can play two sets of inverted power chords.

 

Play Your Chords As Scales

When you play certain chords, you may find them dull-sounding, or downright inappropriate for the given tune you’re playing. This happens all too often to beginners who have yet to learn how to smoothly fret all the notes, who use low-quality gear, and who play on the wrong gain settings (too much distortion can ruin many chords).

To better understand why certain chords, such as the Dominant 7th A, sound the way they do, play them as scales first. Start from the bottom and work your way up, playing one note at a time.

 

Bass Guitar Chords: Final Thoughts

This list of easy bass guitar chords is not definitive. Don’t think you need to master these 5 chords before anything else. These are simply chords on bass that I found particularly useful to learn in the beginning.

None of the bass chord above are extremely difficult, but some of them are definitely a bit more challenging than others. It will take a good bit of practice to be able to play them smoothly, and especially to be able to progress from one chord to the next.

You can find some great beginning bass guitar exercises here. Some of them help you practice chords. Keep at it and you’ll get there!