In this lesson we’ll be looking at a great way to practice your bass fills by using a simple repetitive riff and some ‘doorways’ for moving between multiple positions of an arpeggio or scale.
Adding Fills To A Groove
Today, we are going to take a simple riff that we can loop to give us somewhere to practice some cool fills. Doing this will help you with moving around the neck and applying fills in a musical yet practical way.
We want to start out easy with the fills and eventually branch out all over the neck – we need to keep track of the time and feel of the riff so we can land back on beat 1.
Pentatonic Fills
This riff is built from the E minor pentatonic scale so we can use those notes to create our fills.
E G A B D
1 3 4 5 7
The pentatonic scale is very similar to the natural minor scale except for the missing notes – 4th and 6th. These tones take a bit more thought when being played and so missing them out means you have a pallet of notes that should sound suitable in most situations.
To add a fill to this riff, we will play it three times while leaving the last bar open for interpretation. Below are two sample fills to try with the groove.
These two fills use the notes of Em7 with a few chromatic extras in there for flavour.
Moving Around The Fretboard
Learning the Em7 arpeggio in different positions will give you more options when coming up with your own bass lines. Try the following shapes under your fingers and then try using them to create a unique fill to add to the end of the riff.
The Next Step
If you want to learn more about chord tones and how to apply them in your bass playing, from riffs to fills and solos, check out the Chord Tone Essentials Course today.
Another great lesson. Mark is the best bass guitar instructor I have seen on youtube.
Hey, so I just got a bass and I don’t have any instrumental background, I’ve learned three scales from watching your videos. What should be do e next ?
Sounds like the starter pack bundle would be your best bet. I’ve been “playing” for 30 years. The way this guy answers questions before I can even begin to formulate them makes it worth the money. And it’s not much. A decent bass teacher is like 60 bucks a month and won’t cover a fraction of what is available here for free. Not to mention the detail and work that goes into the paid courses. Bite the bullet, real education from a world class teacher.
Just AWESOME lesson as always…
Completely agree with Amos. I am still a beginner but have made huge progresses with
Mark s lessons “chord tones” is a gold mine and worth each penny…
I had private teachers but Mark is on another level….
I play bass in metal bands for years. I made european tours, did a dozen of albums in store… But I always played guitar on my bass haha. With you Mark I discovered the pleasure to learn real bass technics that i thought very boring before. Thanks a lot for giving me strength to learn ‘properly’ this beautiful instrument ;-) Really thanks a lot :-) (and excuse my english, i’m french haha)
WOW 😮