This week I’m going to show you how to contend with the dreaded key of Eb. The Dreaded Key Of Eb The key of Eb is a common problem area for guitarists and bass players as our instruments start on an E and often leave us craving one extra fret to let us get that…
This week I’m going to show you a really popular melodic bass lick used in loads of different songs. This line can be played over a major or minor chord so is a very useful run to know. The Must-Know Melodic Bass Lick Today we are going to be learning a popular melodic fill used…
In this lesson I show how you can limit yourself to practising with only the root and 5th of each chord while still coming up with an interesting bass line. Roots and Fifths The last few lessons on this subject have explored ways you can spice up your playing by adding ghost notes, approach notes…
This week I’m going to show you how to use the Dominant 7 chord tones and a bass drum pattern to build a cool funky bassline Starting A Groove The foundation of any groove is rhythm. Therefore, your first port of call when creating a bass groove is the kick drum pattern. Locking in with the…
This week I’m going to expand on the Approach Note lesson by covering Double Approach Notes. To create these we simply approach a chord using two notes instead of one. Recap Last week we looked at the notes you can use to approach a chord in a sequence – this time, we are going to…
This lesson I cover diatonic and chromatic approach notes. These are a great way of getting started on building your own bass lines because you don’t have to get too caught up in all the arpeggios and scales. What Are Approach Notes? An approach note is used to approach another note from a tone or…
This video is the second online bass lesson in the series on bass line construction. The previous lesson focused on doubling the bass drum and this lesson introduces the use of chord tones to create some interest in the line. Beyond The Root Let’s take a basic I, vi, ii, V chord progression in the…
This is the first in a series of lessons devoted to creating your own basslines. This lesson deals with doubling the bass drum pattern of a song and the pedalling rock style. Lesson Plan Today we will focus on creating riffs from a linear perspective rather than the short motif style explored in the creating…