Just a quick first reminder. When you are playing chords on the bass it's usually good to play them above the 12th fret so you can really hear the harmony without it sounding to muddy down low.

Ok, let's just jump right in.

I basically visualize chords on the bass in 2 different ways. Open or Closed. What determines whether it's an open or closed chord is the number of strings I have to work with at the particular time and place I decide to play a chord. I know there are a lot of other more complex voicings for chords on the bass but for the simplicity of this lesson I am going to limit it to these two types.

Open voicings utilize all four strings and tend to have a more open ringing sound to them. Closed voicings sound tighter and are played when you only have access to 3 adjacent strings. Just to clarify when I say an open voicing uses all four strings I simply mean that we have all four strings at our disposal and not that we play a note on each one of those strings.