I know I’m guilty of this… I’ll be teaching some concept or idea and say something like, “It’s just the pentatonic scale…” and then play something that I think sounds really cool. But then some students will try to do the same thing and play the pentatonic shape and it just ends up sounding… Un-musical… […]
Mode Mapping On Bass [2 Part Formula For Bass Lines/Fills/Solos]
Have you ever come across a chord progression ‘in the wild’ and been completely stumped as to what you could play over it? Sure – you might be able to scrape by if you just stuck to root notes, but what if you needed to come up with a more creative bass line, or your […]
Chord Symbols For Bass (2/3): Beyond Roots
Once you know how to find the roots of chords, you can be pretty dangerous – maybe even make it through an entire gig on bass! But if you really want to start making cool bass lines, riffs, fills and licks, then you’re going to need to get beyond using just the root. After all, […]
How To Read Chord Symbols For Bass (1/3): The ‘Bassics’
You get a chord chart or lyric sheet put in front of you with a bunch of chord symbols over it, but what the hell are you supposed to play? Especially if you’ve never come across some of the symbols before. This is basically what happened to me first time I saw a ‘real’ jazz […]
Killer Bass Workout
Today, I’ve got a killer bass workout to show you that’s pretty epic! It’s just as useful for rank beginning bass players as it is for seasoned pros – there’s a version of this exercise that will work for everyone. And if you want a seriously monstrous bass workout or even a killer bass warmup, […]
How To Write A Song On Bass [5 Methods]
Let’s talk about how to write a song on bass. It’s an interesting one. Bass is usually a ‘monophonic’ instrument – it only plays one note at a time. This is perfect for creating bass lines, but it can actually make it trickier to write songs. With the guitar or piano, it’s common and relatively […]
