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1 | Blues Bass For Beginners| Lesson 12 | how-to-play-bass.com

BLUES BASS FOR BEGINNERS - COLUMN 12

Introduction

In every column I’ll restate the Goals of this course:

1) Develop your proficiency in the rhythmic feel known as swing 8th notes.

2) Teach you 30 real world bass lines to songs based on the blues chord progression. These songs and bass lines are going to range from early Rock and Roll (like Chuck Berry) to 60s blues rock (like Cream and Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix) to dudes like Robert Cray and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

There are soooo many songs to choose from that we could run this col-umn for the next ten years! Every man and his dog have recorded blues based songs.

3) Extract ‘core’ vocabulary from those 30 real world songs.

4) Get you to practice that core vocabulary in all 12 keys. (Backing tracks will be provided to help).

5) Get you experimenting with this core vocabulary so that you can ‘jam.’

In Lesson 12 we’re going to do three things:

•1.LookattheRollingStonesversionofRoute66 •2.Extractrelevantvocabularyfromit •3.Usethatvocabularyina12barblues-todaywe’regoingtoin troduce the basic blues in A7.

Let’s get going.


SONG TUTORIAL - ROUTE 66 - ROLLING STONES

One of the issues that I knew I had to deal with during this course was dealing with rock-blues that have a straight 8th note pulse versus those with a swing 8th note pulse.

What’s really important to note is that ALL the vocabulary we’ve looked at so far - and will continue to look at - applies equally to straight 8th note blues tunes. All you need to do to employ that vocabulary is to interpret the lines as straight 8th note, not swing 8th note. To really drive this point home, we’re going to look at a tutorial for a song that has a straight 8th note feel - and we’re going to use it for the swing 8th note blues that we’ve been developing through the course.

The song that we’re going to look at is another ‘Blues Standard’ - it’s the tune Route 66. We’re going to look at The Rolling Stones version - and here’s where it gets interesting: the Stones version is a straight 8th feel, but I’m going to take the notes and play them in a swing 8th note feel.

What you’ll find is that the vocabulary you are learning can be used in straight 8th note blues as well! So suddenly the palette of what you can play has expanded dramatically - and anytime you analyze a bass line for more vocabulary, you’ll find that you can use that vocabulary for swing 8th note tunes as well as straight 8th note tunes.

Route 66 is in A - and there’s a 4 bar intro before the verse gets underway:


Notice that the basic line is similar to Sweet Home Chicago in that it goes up from the root note to the sixth and then down via the 5th and 3rd and back towards the root.

Here’s how it’s used in the verse pattern:

After two verses there is a ‘stop verse.’ This is a verse with stabs on the downbeat - as we looked at with the Allman Brothers tunes in Column 9 - and in the song it’s where the lyrics goes: “It goes through St Louis, down to Missouri, Oklahoma City looks oh so pretty....”

The chord structure changes slightly at the end of this section too -


instead of the 12 bar form finishing with a 4 bar turnaround, the ‘stop verse’ finishes with four bars of E. (We’ll look at forms in more detail in a later lesson):

The other section that we’ll look at is the Guitar Solo - there are some variations used to stretch out a bit that we can lift from - plus they will give you ideas if you ever play through this tune at a rehearsal, gig or jam.


These parts will get you through Route 66. (To get through a ‘straight 8th version, simply interpret the parts as straight 8th notes). And of course, you can use vocabulary from earlier lessons too!

Let’s extract some vocabulary from Route 66.


BLUES VOCABULARY PART 12

Early on in the course I went through a piece of vocabulary in 12 keys - but in Column 5 I provided a worksheet that you can use for your vocabulary and to transpose to all 12 keys.

So here’s a guide to using the vocabulary:

1. Make sure you have all the single chord backing tracks downloaded to your hard drive/burnt to CD/transferred to iPod or iPhone.

2. Take each phrase and play it in every key - (use the worksheet from Column 5 if you need to - do it by ‘ear’ if you can!).

3. Take each phrase and play it in every key in 8th notes - so simply double the rhythmic value.

4. Then graduate to using the vocabulary in a 12 bar blues - we’ll look at this in the next section.

Vocabulary From Route 66

Now what’s interesting about Route 66 is that the bulk of the bass line is created from standard vocabulary that we’ve already looked at. Which shows you the ubiquity of the vocabulary - but there’s still more patterns that we can lift and add to our library!

Pattern 1

Pattern 1 is from the Solo section and is a two bar pattern that combines a vertical leap with a descending walk down and incorporates using the 5th on the downbeat of the second pattern:


This pattern is in quarter notes - so simple variations are to add a pair of swung 8th notes on any beat for rhythmic variety.

Pattern 2

Pattern 2 is another two bar pattern - this one uses the question and answer format, combined with a nice interval jump between beat 4 of bar 1 and beat 1 of bar 2:

Pattern 3

Pattern 3 is another two bar pattern that you can use - it works well in different octaves too so make sure you practice it in multiple locations:

Now we’re only going to add these three basic patterns to our vocabulary today - but don’t forget that you can create an almost infinite variety with different combinations of rhythm. This is something we’ll look at in a future column.


PLAYING THE BLUES IN A7

Here’s the chord progression for the basic blues in A7:

As with previous lessons there will be backing tracks at various tempos to download from the associated web page.

A great way to start learning the A7 blues is to take each piece of vocabulary through this progression. This also puts the sound of the patterns into your head as well. Follow the methodology we used in Lesson 4 - so start by playing each pattern separately with the single chord patterns, and then start by methodically alternating two of the patterns. Then bring in a third pattern. And so on.

This really helps get you used to creating bass lines in real time so is a great exercise. I’m not going to repeat what we did in Lesson 4 and play through each example in all keys....that’s part of your homework!

In Lesson 12 what I’m going to do is play through THREE choruses of the blues in A7 - the first chorus will lean on the vocabulary from this lesson...and then in the subsequent two choruses I’ll bring in some other ideas to give you some examples of things that you can do:


Go through the notation/tab and see if you can spot the patterns from today’s lessons....or listen to the video example and see if you can hear them. And see how they seamlessly combine with other patterns we’ve covered in previous lessons.

And also an important lesson to take onboard is how you can create multiple variations of a chorus by combining simple vocabulary that you’ve already learned.


Action Plan

Ok, in this Action Plan are some suggested steps for you to start creating your own blues bass lines. And playing them in ‘real time’ - so you’re creating on the fly as it were.

Here’s the suggested sequence for you to practice what we’ve looked at in Column 12:

1. Play all vocabulary patterns of Lesson 12 both with the separate 4 bar single chord tracks from Column 1 AND then play each pattern through the 12 bar blues in C7, F7, Bb7, Eb7, Ab7, Db7, D7, G7 and now A7. 2. Play through the 12 bar blues in A7 using simple combinations of todays vocabulary.

3. With any of the blues tracks, use the methodology we set out in Column 4 of creating lines ‘on the fly’ by starting with one pattern and alternating with another pattern. Then adding another pattern on Bar 3 and so on. Repeat/review the blues in all the keys.

The more of this experimentation you do, the more your brain will get used to the concept of creating lines on the fly by sequencing pre-learned patterns together. This is why it’s crucial to thoroughly learn these patterns and the necessity for all the preparation work.

Summary

There’s a lot of practice suggested in the Action Plans. If you truly want to master this genre this practice and thorough preparation is anecessity to build up the vocabulary of patterns that you can use.

As each lesson goes by and we add more patterns, your lines will improve.


I can’t stress highly enough though how critical it is to do the exercises where you are actually playing and creating in real time using memorized patterns. If your practice time is limited make sure that at least 50% of your blues bass time is working on this! And don’t forget,

you can start out at the lowest tempo track to give your brain time to think!

Lesson 13

In Lesson 13 we’ll carry on with our investigation into the blues by looking at some sections from another famous blues song.

Questions and Comments

If you have any questions, please send me an email.

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