Weekly Basslines #217: Blues Bass Lesson (Bouncy Blues)

Last week I was holding a "Blues Workshop" at my music school "STAGE AHEAD".
I recorded some of the presentations I did and thought it would be a good idea to show you some of the basslines I played.



Here's a session I called "Bouncy Blues":

The bassline was mainly improvised, but I was utilizing a certain concept of bassline building that I call the "7th chord tone set".

Tone-Sets are a distinct group of notes which belong to a certain type of chord. The 7th chord tone set is derived from the 7th chord (G7, C7, D7) and contains the root, fifth, minor seventh and octave.

Starting with the root on beat one you can use the different notes in any order you like.
Here’s an example of a popular blues bassline starting with the root, jumping up to the octave and coming down via the minor seventh and the fifth.

There are many many ways you can play this bassline. Here are a few variations I used in the recorded session.

In the first variation I’m playing a short triplet fill on beat four:

In the next variation I’m using a blue note (#4) within the triplet fill:

Sometimes I expand the triplet fill over two beats:

To enhance the groove I often play the first eighth note of each beat short (staccato):

Here's the first page of the transcription:

You can get the whole 4-pages of the transcription plus 6 Audio tracks (5 demonstration tracks and the Playalong track) if you become my patron on PATREON:

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If you want to learn more about the Blues, check out my

Lesson To Go - Blues Bass (part 1 + 2)