Bass Lessons - Page 24

“New Jack Swing” is an era of R&B that mixed jazz, pop and electronic dance music sensibilities with hip-hop production techniques. The “sound”, pioneered by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (former keyboardist and bassist for the Time) and Teddy Riley consists largely of synthesized bass lines, swung hip-hop beats created by the TR-808 drum machine and the SP-1200 sampler with...

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...

If you’ve been following this column for a while, you know we place a lot of emphasis on the details of good technique, including the left hand. Sometimes, though, we go to see our favorite bass players and they have the “pistol grip”. So is it really necessary to use one finger per fret and good posture on the fretboard?...

I want to continue the “G-Funk” exploration in this episode by taking a look at the 1995 cut “Safe & Sound” by DJ Quik. This song is a prime example of having a part from a record re-played as opposed to sampling it. This gives the producer so much more freedom in terms of what elements can be added or...

Today we will be tackling Jaco Pastorius’s bass line on the title track from Weather Report’s 1980 album, Night Passage. This is one of the best Weather Report albums. To me, it always sounds fresh and modern, like a timeless record. The group also includes drummer Peter Erskine and percussionist Robert Thomas Jr, who sound very tight together. In this...

Everyone loves a perfectly placed fill. That’s why today we’ll be going over scalar exercises that will help us create those tasty licks while beefing up our technique. In essence, we’re practicing a scale. Typically when you play a scale, you go from root to root in order. But we’re going to break it down and move in thirds instead!...

Dusty Springfield was a British singer whose early chart success in the UK and USA was with straightforward pop tunes such as 1963’s “I Only Want to be With You,” and more sophisticated ballads like 1966’s “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me”. The 1968 Dusty… Definitely album began her change towards a more R&B/Soul sound, with inclusion of...

G-Funk is a sub-genre of Hip-Hop that came out of 1990’s West Coast Gangsta Rap. Some characteristics of G-Funk are Parliament-Funkadelic-inspired, with mid-tempo grooves, melodic synths (high pitched “Gangsta Leads”), deep bass, and male or female vocals on the hooks. G-funk often consists of fewer, unaltered samples per song as opposed to the altered samples that are more prominent in...

Want a formula to create grooves over a chord progression? We’ve got you covered in this lesson with an exercise that bolsters our technique while building grooves with triads. We’ll tackle a I-vi-IV-V chord progression using a formula that has two main ingredients: triad notes and rhythm. The triad notes are already laid out for us, but we can pick...

This challenging lesson outlines a musical tactic called “follow ups” to add to your groove tool box. We’ll go over some cool ways to create call and response follow up patterns using all of the components of music – helping you to play great lines over chords that will render tasteful musical ideas! Be sure to download the transcription for...

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...

Looking for ways to spice up your grooves? Double stops are a great option. In their most basic form, double stops are when we play two notes together at the same time. They can sound muddy in some registers of the bass, but we’ll go over some tricks to make them sound like gold. This is another all-in-one lesson as...