 Hi, I want to give you just a couple of real quick thoughts about proper technique with the bass and also how an electric bass works. Want to make sure you get the best sound out of your instrument and that you're playing with the best technique you possibly can. So these are just a couple of really quick little things to remember and to watch in terms of the way you're playing your instrument. First of all, left hand. Left hand on the bass is not hard at all. The way I always tell bass players is you want to make essentially a four with your left hand. You want your left thumb to be straight up and down on the neck or essentially perpendicular to the neck. If that left thumb is laying down and you're holding the instrument sort of gripping the instrument, you're really not doing it right. You want that thumb to be straight up and down on the back of that instrument. That also allows your fingers to sort of spread out in a really comfortable way. Now if you're just starting on the bass, it might feel like a huge stretch to play the instrument. The more you play, little by little your fingers will get better and better at stretching. Bass players should be using essentially a span of four fingers to cross a span of three frets. Rarely do bass players use this ring finger. So instead we want to use our index finger, middle finger and pinky. Now that might feel uncomfortable to you at first because your pinky might be weak. Don't avoid using that pinky finger. It's so important to playing the bass. Really the index finger and the pinky are your two most important fingers as you're playing. That relationship between those three frets really, really makes a lot of difference. So that's your left hand set up. Your fingers should come straight up over the neck. If they're curved like this, not so good. And really your ring finger doesn't have to be placed on a fret at all. A lot of guitar players like to do that and it doesn't always promote really great sound on the bass because a lot of times you get low on a fret and you get a little buzz. Be careful with that. Right hand. Right hand placement. I like to see bass players anchor their thumb typically on one of the pickups on your bass. Now as a jazz bass player, especially someone that's just getting started with jazz, I recommend you anchor your thumb on the pickup that's farther forward on your bass. Now to make that make sense, I want to explain these two pickups. Your two pickups serve two different purposes. The back pickup tends to have a more snappy, trebly sound. This is because it's closer to the bridge and think about the way a string vibrates. If the string is vibrating closer to the bridge, it's vibrating on a tighter vibration. As it moves away from the bridge, it vibrates on a rounder vibration. So this pickup tends to have a snappier, let's get that sound, has a snappier sound where the front pickup has a rounder sound. So for jazz, I like to use that front pickup. So I recommend that you use it typically for the jazz that you're playing. This bass has three knobs. This knob is a volume knob for the front pickup. This is a volume knob for the back pickup. And this is a tone control treble bass. So I tend to bring this volume up pretty significantly because I like the sound of this pickup when I'm playing jazz. I bring this volume up just a little bit, just to get a little bit of the snappy sound, and then I adjust the tone till I find the sound that I really like. If your bass only has one pickup, simply adjust the volume and the tone till you find something that you really like. The other little thing is which finger do you use to pluck the strings when you're playing bass? Here's what I would recommend. Usually if your thumb is anchored here, you want to use your index finger and you want to pluck the string right beside the tip of your finger, not on the tip. So I tend to get to the side a little bit and get that kind of a sound. Now you can play the bass with one finger, but it sort of limits how fast you can play. I recommend getting good with two fingers and you can practice alternating between them. If you get comfortable using two fingers, you'll start learning that sometimes strings ring when you don't want them to ring, and you can sort of dampen or stop the sound on the string with your alternate finger as you're playing. That all comes with time. You'll get good at it as you go, but these are just a few basics to get you started. I hope that that all makes good sense, and good luck as you get started playing the bass.