Weekly Basslines #218: Blues Bass Lesson (The "Texas Stride" Groove)

Here's one more lesson from the Blues Bass Workshop:

The name “Texas Stride Groove” is derived from a piano playing technique that came up during the ragtime era, where the left hand plays a four-beat pulse with bassnotes on the downbeats and jumps up to playing chords on the upbeats inbetween, while the right hand plays the melody. A very virtuosic technique generating the charateristic “oom-pah” sound, that is the basis of this groove. On bass we play the four-beat-pulse with arpeggio-patterns and the “pah”-section is created by striking open strings or playing deadnotes on the third triplet of each beat.

In the video I’m using a major chord pattern starting from the octave and utilizing a sixth rather than the b7 ,because the guitar usually plays the sixth in the rhythm pattern too.

On the IV- and V-chord I play the “Major Sixth Pattern” starting with a low root:

For further study check out my "Lesson To Go" series about Blues Bass:

Blues Bass (part 1)

Blues Bass (part 2)

Here's the first page of the session transcription I did on the workshop:

You can get the whole 4-pages of the transcription the 4-pages lesson sheet (showing you some of the variations and fills I'm playing) plus the audio playalong track by becoming my patron on PATREON:

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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)