There’s a ‘trick’ that just about every bassist uses that takes their bass lines from ‘OK’ (or even ‘meh’) to extraordinary. And the best part? You don’t need an encyclopedic knowledge of music theory or even to know your fretboard that well. To use this ‘trick’, you only need 3 frets, but those 3 frets […]
3 Blistering Pentatonic Bass Licks
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… […]
Jack Bruce: Bass Line Masterpiece
Jack Bruce’s bass line masterpiece, to me at least, comes from a 1968 performance of Robert Johnson’s Crossroads. I freaking love it now, but the first time I heard the song, I was wholly unimpressed. My first exposure to that song was at a musty, crusty blues jam session, and the version that got played […]
How To Play Melodies On Bass (3 Melodies To Get Started With)
When I was about 17, a friend of mine gave me a copy of the self-titled Jaco album: To be honest, at the time, I didn’t really understand the music – it was kind of beyond me. But the bass playing? That blew me away!!! The growl of his fretless, the chime of his harmonics, […]
Master The Minor 2-5-1 On Bass
Let’s talk about how to play through a minor 2-5-1 progression on bass. I don’t know about you, but when I was getting serious about my improvising, I loathed playing over minor 2-5-1 progressions. Give me a 12-bar blues? I was fine – I could play over that all day. A major 2-5-1 – no […]
How To Hear And Recognize The Modes (For Bass Players)
Imagine this: You’re at a jam session and a guitarist starts noodling away (that shouldn’t be hard to imagine…) and asks you to join in with what they’re doing. But what you’re hearing doesn’t sound like it’s in a major key, but it also doesn’t sound like a straight-up minor key either. You realize they’re […]
