by There’s almost nothing better for your own bassline writing than studying some of the greatest bass players’ lines.
That’s exactly what we’ll be doing in lesson #8 of the Basslines From Scratch series.
In this video, I’ve found 3 songs by some of the most iconic bass players ever – and they’re all written over the same chord progression.
This is perfect for us because it lets us see how each player approaches each song ever so slightly differently.
We can see how they used different notes, different rhythms, different approaches, the range they play everything in. Even just looking at a few bars of each song can be eye-opening.
If you go through this process with a few different basslines, then you can take the lessons you learn and apply them directly to your own basslines.
Check out today’s lesson here:
Video Not Showing Up Here? Watch On YouTube
FREE: Get The Bass Lines From Scratch Checklist
Use this quick quiz to 'test' your own bass lines to make sure they're world-class. If not, the checklist will show you exactly what you need to do to improve it so your bass lines are as good as they could possibly be.
You'll also get all the tabs, notation and practice tracks from the entire Bass Lines From Scratch Series.
By the way, the songs might have the same chord progression, but they were all in different keys. To make things easier to compare, all the lines have been transposed to the key of G.
You can see how each song has a completely different feel and sound, even though the chords were the same.
Why?
It all comes back to the song. If you tried to play the bassline from one song in another, it just wouldn’t make sense. Each line was specifically crafted to function within the song, and that is the lesson you can apply to every bassline that you ever make.
Serve the music you’re playing.
But once you have a bassline and you think it serves the song, how can you know for sure? The last thing you want is to create a line that’s distracting, non-functional, or just doesn’t work. To make sure that never happens to you, I’ve created the Basslines From Scratch Checklist.
If you want to make sure your basslines are always serving the music, just run them through the checklist. If so, then great! Don’t change a thing. If not though, you’ll know exactly what you can do to make sure your lines are as good as they can possibly be.
The checklist also comes with the tabs and notation for the songs in this lesson as well. You can get them in their original keys as well as the transposed versions for easy comparison.
As always, if you have any questions about anything you’ve seen in this lesson, just let me know! I’m always happy to answer questions in the comment section.
Good luck with the lesson and happy bassline making!
Cheers,
Great video! I liked the way you broke these down and the you stressed that these lines “served the song”. That truly helps us understand the bassists place and as you pointed out in the video, these are great bassists … the put their egos on the back burner and played lines that made their respective songs work best.
Great job, great analysis, and great teaching. Thanks!
You’re welcome Kevin! Glad you liked and thanks so much for the kind words too.
Another very instructive lesson. Thx.