Articles by Ryan Madora - Page 5

In your endless, tiring Google searches for the best bass songs for beginners, you’ve most likely encountered “Fire” by Ohio Players. This 1974 funk classic, featuring Marshall “Rock” Jones on the bass guitar, is a great choice for beginners.

Let's learn one of the quintessential funk bass riffs that every great bass player uses. Inspired by some of the greats, including Leroy Hodges (Al Green), Chuck Rainey (Aretha Franklin), and Louis Johnson (The Brothers Johnson and Billy Preston), this is an easy funk bass fill to add to almost any song.

This bass lesson is here to get you working through the key of E. We’ll dig into two-octave E Major and E minor scales so that you can feel confident working through the most comfortable key on the bass.

In this lesson, we’ll explore ways to add some rhythmic panache to our walking bass lines. One great way to do that is with dead notes!

We’re keeping it groovy today by checking out the Warwick RockBass Star Bass. It’s a medium scale, semi-hollow body instrument with a unique tonal range.

This lesson adds a new song to your blues repertoire, but don’t worry, it’s not another 12-bar. “She Caught The Katy” by Taj Mahal is simply a great tune with a funky bass line. We’ll dig into the chord progression, work through the different sections of the song, and get you playing in no time.

In this Keep It Groovy bass lesson, Ryan Madora walks us through how to play a blues shuffle by practicing along to drum backing tracks.

In this lesson, we do our best Duck Dunn impression and learn the bass line to the Otis Redding classic, “Down In The Valley.”

In this lesson, we’ll keep it groovy with a classic country bass line. We’re featuring “Jolene” by Dolly Parton and how this relatively easy bass line still requires us to be aware of many musical concepts.

This is a serious bass lesson. We’re digging into triads… different positions, using our pinky, major and minor shapes, the whole shebang!

In this lesson, we’ll explore the world of Soul and R&B bass lines and how major triads are used to create memorable parts. Bass players, including Duck Dunn, David Hood and more have used this approach to write iconic bass lines for songs we know and love.

Let’s dig into one of the truly great James Jamerson bass lines, the Motown classic “How Sweet It Is” by Marvin Gaye. This lesson will string together descending arpeggios, the blues box pattern, and root-fifth movement.