Hi this is Greg from Greg's Bass Shed,
welcome to the lesson.
In this video we're going to look at
five of Tommy Shannon's
classic blues bass lines.  If you haven't
heard of Tommy Shannon,
well he was Stevie Ray Vaughan's right
hand man in the band
'Double Trouble'.  For me, the appeal of
Tommy Shannon's bass lines
is his solid driving sound that he gets.
He really knows how to fill out the
bottom end
and his techniques are well worth
learning, especially his Texas Blues
shuffle technique.
As well as looking at the five bass
lines, I'll also point out
certain techniques that you can use to
enhance your own blues walking bass
lines.
When Tommy Shannon played with Stevie
Ray Vaughan, Double Trouble
tuned down a semitone or a half-step,
but we can look at that from the
second bass line. So I'll explain
how you do that.  But for this first bass
line, this is from a Johnny Winter song,
'I'm Yours And I'm Hers' so we don't have
to down tune for that.  So just
normal tuning for this first song.  Before
playing with Stevie Ray Vaughan,
Tommy Shannon also played with other
blues artists, and one of these was a guy
called Johnny Winter.
If you don't know him then I suggest
that you check out his self-titled album,
Johnny Winter
because Tommy plays on all of the album,
and there's some great tracks on it.
It sort of reminds me of the early years
of 'Fleetwood Mac' around the Peter Green
era.
I'm Yours And I'm Hers starts with a bass
solo on the intro.
So we're going to look at the intro and
the verse.
I'll now play that for you.
 
First of all I'll show you how to play
this descending run that we've got in
the first bar.
Now that's based on an a minor blues
scale which I'll play for you now.
Okay we use all those notes apart from
the E
and obviously the run is descending, it
goes backwards so we actually
go the other way,
and we carry on the scale - G, open E
too, those notes. Okay
and what we've got before that, we've got
some octave A's -  I use the open A but
you can use A - fifth fret of the E-string.
Whatever you find easiest, and then we've
got the high A - that is that seventh fret of the D-string.
Okay that rhythm and then the run.
So I suggest that you practice that really
slowly until you can play it properly,
and then speed it up,  In the fourth bar
we've got an
E7 chord and we just use octave E's
again so
open E and an eE on the seventh fret of
the A-string
So we've got that rhythm.....
so the bass note is one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two, one-two-three, one-two-three,
one-two, one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two,
one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two, one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two.
Make sure you play that one-two and just
don't play one-two-three, one-two-three,
one-two-three.
Okay
so the whole of the intro.....
Then we have the verse and we have a
similar riff to the intro.
We just don't use the octave A, so we
start on the high A
and then don't go down to the open E, and
then we've got an answering phrase here...
and that just uses A C D
and G.
So I'll now play the first two bars of
the verse...
We play that riff twice in the verse and
then we move to D.
Now the riff is slightly different on D
Okay
and then
then A
Down to D.  You've now got enough
information to play the whole bass line
and like with the other tunes, Tommy
Shannon plays slight variations
as he goes through the song.  So see if
you can hear those when you're listening
to the original recording,
and you can even put your own variations
in.  Now I've written
all these bass lines down on the pdf
with standard notation and
tab and you can get that by clicking the
link in the description
below this video, and it's really handy
to have that pdf
because you can look through and see
where all the variations and changes are.
Also remember to subscribe to me here on
Youtube  -you can do that by pressing the
red
subscribe button on the bottom of this
video, and if you click the bell
you'll get notified about any of my new
video releases.
We're now going to move on to the Stevie
Ray Vaughan songs from Double Trouble
and you need to detune your bass.  So I've
already detuned this,
you need to tune your E-string down
to an E flat,
your A-string down to an A flat,
your D-string down to a D flat, and your
G-string down to a G flat, and the reason
we detune is because there are some really nice
E flats and that becomes just an open E
when you detune.  But if you haven't got
that then you can't get those
nice low notes.  So your bass should sound
like this...
The second bass line we can look at is
from Tightrope from the album,
'In Step,' and I'm going to play the intro
and the verse for you now....
The intro starts with this riff...
So we've just got E B D and then
A G E and that's repeated twice,
and then for the verse we've got a
groove on B,
so.....
and make sure you play those first two
notes short to
give them some punch.
So just B's and then E.  I'm using the open
A for this bit,
so B A B and then E A.  Okay so we've just
got E
A and B for that,
and then we've got some variations on
that.  So if you look in the second bar
on the pdf, remember you can get a pdf
below by clicking the link in the
description,
so the second bar of Tightrope of the
verse...
okay to an Fsharp
B A F sharp A.
You might want to use the open A's,
that's entirely up to you, so you do....
But I prefer using that fifth fret of
the E-string.
Then we've got the same riff on the
third bar
and then
and then we go down to G sharp G sharp
E and then we've got the riff again.
So that's the majority of the bass line
right there.
Remember though, when you play under the guitar solo, that follows a 12
bar blues sequence, a traditional 12 bar
blue sequence.
So that's what you need to do there.
So that's the 12 bar blues in B,
and if you need help with this
sequence then click on
this link here -  that will take you to one
of my other videos that gives you help
about setting up that sequence.
The third bass line we're going to look
at is from Crossfire.  Now again this is
from the In Step album by Double Trouble,
and we can look at the main riff.  I
love this riff as it's really catchy, it's
such a solid riff
and Tommy Shannon actually wrote this
riff, and wrote the song.
This is a fairly basic rift to learn, but
once you know it, the real discipline is
repeating it over and over again
in time, accurately, and with good groove.
If you listen to the original, you hear
that Tommy Shannon just does that.  He
doesn't really put many variations in,
he just plays it really solidly and he's
a prime example to me of a really in-demand blues
bass player because he just gets the job
done and plays
what's right, and if you watch Tommy
Shannon in some of the Double Trouble
live footage, you'll see that he really
watches Stevie Ray Vaughan like a hawk,
to hear and see what he's doing, and then
just alters his playing
to suit that.  This riff is based on a
straight
dominant seventh arpeggio,
that's in E, so the riff goes....
Again, practice that one slowly until
you get it, and then you can speed it up,
and the riff is the basis of the whole
song.  There's a few
little changes throughout the song,
but again listen to the original
and see if you can work those out.  But
this is the main riff.
The fourth Tommy Shannon bass line we're
going to look at is from Double Trouble's
'Pride And Joy,' and this is one of their
most famous songs.
It features Tommy Shannon playing
his Texas shuffle groove.
Now if you want to find out more about
how to create Texas blues walking lines,
then check out another one of my videos
which I'll put the link for here,
or you can go over to my 'Blues Playlist'
here on Youtube.
I've got other blues lessons on there too.
I'm now going to play you the first
verse from Pride And Joy....
Now the key to playing this bass line is
to put these low open notes in.  So if we
look at the first bar, we've got this
pattern...
So we've got.... they are the main notes
and Tommy Shannon just fills in the
other notes in between ,with open E's
when we have an E chord.
Now I find it easier to play the notes
on the A-string with my second finger
on my plucking hand and play the
opening E's with my
first finger.
If we just played the main notes
without the bottom E's, we'd have....
That's a classic boogie line, but it
really fattens the bass line out to have
these open note.s
Now it might take you a while to learn
that technique, but it's really worth it
because it really fattens out the bass
line, and it's especially useful if you're
playing in a blues trio
because you want to fill out that sound.
When we go to the A chord, then we've got
some low open A's there,
and then back to the E
and then B
and then A
and then E
and that's a turnaround there that uses
B7.  You can look at this bass line on the
pdf - remember it's got tab and standard
notation.  So learn that Texas
shuffle groove and then put the whole
thing together.  There's different
variations
as you go through the song, so see if you
can hear those on the original,
and incorporate those into the bass line.
The fifth and last bass line that we'll
look at in this video
is from Texas Flood, and this is from the
album 'Texas Food' by Double Trouble.
Pride And Joy is also from that album as well.
This song is in 12/8 time which is a classic time to have
for lots of blues
shuffles.  So you've got four beats in
a bar, but each beat has
three eighth notes in it.  If you're in
4/4 time, then a quarter note would just
have two eighth notes.  So we've got this
rhythm
one two three, one two three, one two
three, one two three, one two three, one two three, one
and it's often used, 12/8 times
for slow
blues shuffles.  This is an excellent bass
line to study to learn about
12/8 blues shuffles.  Now for me,
in this style there really are some
notes that sound great and others that
don't.
So there's really the right type of note
here, and you learn that from experience.
But if you're not quite there yet,
then study this bass line, and really
learn what Tommy Shannon is playing here.
Now this is in G, and we've got this
rhythm.......
so that's a quarter note followed by an
eighth note.
There's that really nice fill there at
the end of the first bar.
So that's just based on a D....   Then we've
got C
and then G, and then here this is quite
interesting - this bar has just got
root ,major third, fifth,
and then stepping up to C from G
and it's really nice - those two short
notes there
and then we're on C
still C and then G again
and then D
C
and that's a turnaround, those last two bars. So we've got G
C G D.
So have a look at that bass line on the
pdf, and look at the chord symbols above
and see if you can work out why certain
notes work there.  So you can see in
the third bar,
you've got the root, the third, and the
fifth.
If you look at the D7, when we get to
that, on the second from last line, you've
got again root, third, and then octave.
Okay so just look and see why you think
these notes are working.
Well that's the five Tommy Shannon bass
lines, I hope you enjoyed this video,
it was really fun to make it, and if you
did enjoy it, can you please
like and share it which really helps me
out, and also leave any comments below.
I'd love to see your comments, what your favourite tunes, if there's
any other tunes you'd like me to do,
and what you thought of the video, and also
if you've got any questions, i'm happy to
answer and to help you.
Also remember to subscribe by
pressing the red subscribe button,
click the bell and also download the pdf -
which you can get
below this video.  You might also want to
check out my website:
gbshed.com - I've got more free resources
over there and I've got a great giveaway
when you sign up to my Mailing List.
I've also got video courses and ebooks.
So if you're serious about improving
your bass playing,
then go over and check out my website:
gbshed.com
I've put details of that, and more
useful links below in the description.
This is Greg from Greg's Bass Shed,  I'll
see you in the next video.
 
 
 
