Exploring the Bossa Nova (L#104)

As you’ll hear in this lesson, there’s a good reason why I want you to learn the fundamentals of playing the bossa nova. I got myself into a sticky situation in the past, and I want to save you the same embarrassment. You’ll have to watch the lesson to find out what happened!

The bossa nova is one of the most popular and widely used of the latin style bass lines, so if you’re looking to work as a professional bass player getting this into your tool bag is a must. It’s also a great way of learning and practicing your chord tones/arpeggios but in a more musical way than just running up and down the fingerboard. Because the bossa nova is of a medium tempo, it will give you time to actually think about your note choice and fretboard visualisation, something that can be tough within faster tempo’s.

Once you’ve worked through the lesson I recommend that you look beyond the bossa nova and research other latin styles of music. As the rhythm’s used within within this genre of music can be so syncopated, for a bassist there is is a lot learn from this… and it can be a lot of fun too!

As always... see you in the shed,

Scott :)