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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