It’s one thing to know your minor pentatonic scale on bass. It’s another thing entirely to know exactly where and how to use it. If you just randomly noodle up and down your bass, is that going to make great music? My guess – probably not. But if you have a solid idea of where your […]
The Pentatonic Scale For Bass: A ‘Hack’ For Memorizing And Combining Pentatonic Shapes
When it comes to learning and using the pentatonic scale for bass, how do most people do it? If you’re like me or thousands of other bass players, at some point, you’ve probably sat down with some tabs, sheet music or scale shapes and just tried to learn your pentatonic scale that way. Up and […]
Inject Melody Into Your Playing With This Interval
Have you ever noticed that when you try to make up a bass line or take a bass solo, it just sounds like you’re just going up and down a bunch of scales? If so, you’re not alone! This is something that a ton of bass players struggle with. I definitely went through this myself. […]
The 4 Types Of Bass Lines
There are a million different ways to write your own bass lines. Every bass player does it slightly differently, but what if I told you that the overwhelming majority of bass lines could fit into 4 broad categories? Just 4! And each of the 4 categories does something slightly different to the music. Do you […]
Advanced Bass Improv – How To Play ‘Outside’ The Harmony
I got an email a few weeks ago from an email subscriber asking about an advanced bass improv concept – playing ‘outside‘ the established harmony. This is very much an advanced topic. If you’re still in the process of learning how to improvise using scales and modes, keep at it. You can even use my […]
Blues Scale On Bass – From Beginner To Pro In 9 Minutes
I’m a huge fan of the blues scale on bass. It can work nearly in so many different situations, it sounds great, and it’s pretty easy to get started. However, it’s also super easy to sound horrible using it, even if you use the ‘right’ notes. How can this be?!?! Well it turns out that […]
