4 Pentatonic Bass Lines

Do you ever find it boring just trying to learn scales by themselves? Some people actually enjoy the process of scale learning – I’m one of them. However, a lot of other people can’t think of anything worse than having to learn scales.

So what’s the solution?

It’s to play songs that use whatever scale you’re trying to learn!

That way, you’re learning a song (what you want) and sneakily learning a scale. It’s almost like hiding your dog’s bad tasting pill inside a delicious treat. The dog gets what it wants, (a delicious treat) but also what it needs (the medicine).

So in this video lesson, I want to show you 4 songs that use the minor pentatonic scale.

There were a few criteria for the bass lines in this video.

#1 – They had to use ALL the notes of the pentatonic scale

#2 – The could ONLY use those notes. No other notes were allowed – the lines had to be pure pentatonic

#3 – It couldn’t just be a small lick in the middle of a song. It had to be either a whole section or even the whole song that used the pentatonic.

Plus, I wanted them to be cool songs as well…

This narrowed things down a lot, but it also means that when you learn the bass lines in this lesson, you’re getting the whole picture of the pentatonic scale, and you’re learning how it’s used in the real world.

Check out the lesson here:

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When you start to search for pentatonic bass lines, you’ll find that they’re not overly common. Why is this? It’s because as bass players, one of our main goals is to outline the harmony – the chords of a song. The pentatonic scale doesn’t do this at all! In fact, it’s intentionally vague.

I talk about this in this video here. This ‘vagueness’ is great for creating melodies, but not quite as useful for outlining the chords.

That’s not to say pentatonic bass lines don’t exist though – they absolutely do. It’s just that they’re usually in the form of a riff and there’s almost always another instrument playing the same thing – just like all the examples that we talked about in the lesson.

If you’re looking to upgrade your knowledge of the pentatonic scale using actual music, make sure you download the tabs and notation for these lines. You can get them all for free by filling out the form above. Not only will you get closer to mastering the pentatonic scale on bass, but you’ll be playing real music too.

If you have any questions, just put them in the comments below. I’m always happy to help out.

Good luck with the lesson and happy playing!

Cheers,