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Creative Bass Lines - Page 2

Creative Bass Lines: The Chameleon Variations

Creative Bass Lines: The Chameleon Variations

In this lesson, I’ve taken a pretty classic and fairly easy to play bass part from Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon” and given you a few examples of how to use that as a springboard for creating other bass lines around that core groove. This can be really useful when playing under multiple soloists on the same tune. It’s not always enough...

Creative Bass Lines: Funking with the Dorian Mode and the Blues Scale

Creative Bass Lines: Funking with the Dorian Mode and the Blues Scale

Welcome back to the third installment of Creative Bass Lines. Before we start, I’d like to take a moment to say a fond farewell to the amazing Victor Bailey who sadly left us way too soon a few days ago. Victor was an enormous influence on me, and his highly melodic yet super funky playing made an indelible impression on...

Creative Bass Lines: Beat Displacement

Creative Bass Lines: Beat Displacement

Here we have the second installment of the Creative Bass Lines, and this month, it’s “Bass Gruv”. For this we’re looking at a Headhunters-esque bass groove I wrote. This would fit the harmony of an E dominant 7th chord, or for a crunchier sound, try setting up a vamp with an E7?9, too. I wanted to introduce some of you...

Creative Bass Lines: Melodic and Rhythmic Lines

Creative Bass Lines: Melodic and Rhythmic Lines

For my first column here at No Treble, I thought it might be fun to demonstrate a few actual bass parts I have come up with for projects I have recorded. One of the things I enjoy in the playing of the bassists that have influenced me is the use of interesting melodic and rhythmic devices – more often than...