Some bass lines can sound very familiar but are actually original and unique. A lot of blues bass lines sound familiar because blues as a genre relates to everyone, even if you don't listen to or play blues. While sometimes cliché and old-sounding, blues bass lines are fun to play, especially with a group of players. This lesson will cover the 12-bar blues progression and a few blues bass lines you can use. You should have an understanding of how scales and chords work, what it means to play a I-IV-V progression, and also the blues and pentatonic scales.
One thing that separates blues from most music is the eighth notes. Typical eighth notes are played in a “strait” rhythm, meaning each eighth note is played as half of a quarter note, but in jazz and blues, eighth notes are “swung.” This means that if you have two eighth notes next to each other, one will be slightly longer and more emphasized than the other. This type of playing is rarely shown in music, but when it is it will have two eighth notes set equal (=) to a sixteenth and an eighth note. This means when you see two eighth notes written, you will play one as a sixteenth and the other as an eighth note. Be sure to listen to the audio clips to get a fuller understanding of this concept as it is a large part of blues and jazz.
The bass, I mean base, of blues is the progression. In rock and other styles of music, the chord progressions differ from song to song. In blues, the progression is relatively the same with a few twists, and of course different keys. In the course of 12 bars, we will complete the progression. You can break up the 12 bars into three sections of 4 bars, or 3 phrases. The first phrase will play the root chord, or I chord for 4 bars. The second phrase uses the IV chord for two bars and the I chord again for the remaining two bars. The third and final phrase uses the progression V, IV, I, I. You may be able to understand this better by using a chart.
This shows, in Roman numeral form, the blues progression. This is the same as saying Gmaj is made up of the I, III, and V notes of the major scale. The blues progression is made up of the scale degrees above but in a certain key. This will be covered more in-depth in the next example.
Now, on to making a bass line for this progression. A good blues bass line is created by using the arpeggios of the chords in the progression. Most blues progressions are made with 7th chords; let’s take a look at a 7th chord. C7 is made up of the regular 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the major scale and also the flat 7th of the major scale. Using this arpeggio and the 6th note of the major scale, we can make a nice blues bass line. Let’s take a look at this example and the blues progression on the fretboard.
Here is an example of G blues. The progression is written out above the measures, and every phrase is separated by a double bar. If there are two measures in succession that use the same chord, you can play through the first beat of the second measure without restarting your line. Since this is in Gmaj, the first 4 bars are a G arpeggio, or the I chord as signaled above the measures. When we hit the 5th measure, we will be playing the IV chord, or the chord that uses the IV note of the Gmaj scale, as the root. The IV chord in the key of G is C, which means we will play a C arpeggio for the measures with a IV above them. Likewise the 5th chord will be the D arpeggio since the D chord uses the 5th note of the Gmaj scale as the root note. This is the chart for G blues; each box represents a measure.
G |
G |
G |
G |
C |
C |
G |
G |
D |
C |
G |
G |
Now, on to our explanation of the bass line. The bass line is a simple pattern that uses the G7 arpeggio with an added 6th. Remember that in 7th chords, the 7th note is played as a flat major 7th unless it is labeled M7 for major 7th. A GM7 would have a major 7th, instead of the minor 7th you would have in a regular G7. In Gm7 the chord and 7th is minor. GminM7 uses a minor chord shape but with a major 7th; these chords usually sound horrible (no offense GminM7th chord). Back to the arpeggio, we are playing each note of the Gmaj7add6 chord twice. At the 7th degree we turn around and come back down the arpeggio. The arpeggio shape can be moved anywhere and takes on the name of the first or root note.
This lesson is just brushing the surface of blues. If you like the sound of the example, you will definitely want to check out some more blues lessons. Be sure to watch the video for a different explanation of the examples. And if you still have questions, check out the GLI forums!
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