If you want to play authentic blues bass lines,
then this is the video for you. Hi I’m Luke
from Become A Bassist and in this lesson,
you’re going to learn 6 blues bass line
formulas that you can make work in nearly
any situation.
[Video Intro]
Whether you’re playing a blues gig, writing
your own 12 bar blues songs or just want to
play some music with other people, the blues
is a great choice. It’s almost universally
known so chances are when you play with other
people and you don’t know what to play,
someone will likely suggest going to town
on a blues. For you to do that as a bass player
though, you need to know how to get through
the form using some authentic blues bass lines,
and that’s exactly what I want to show you
in this video. We’ve got 6 in store and
they can be made to work in nearly any situation.
We’ll be moving through these lines pretty
quickly, but if you want the tabs, notation
and backing tracks for everything in here,
just click the first link in the description
of this video, sign up on that page and I’ll
send it all to you absolutely free. You can
follow along with this video or download it
and practice it all later. Right now though,
let’s dive in!
Alright! Blues Bass Line Formula #1 - We’re
going to start really simply with just an
8th note line that just focuses on the roots
of the chords. This couldn’t be simpler.
Let’s say we’re in the key of A - we’re
playing an A blues, all you would do is play
the roots of the chords as 8th notes the whole
way. Hopefully you know how a blues is constructed,
but just in case you don’t, let’s recap
really quickly.
The most basic blues just has 3 chords. The
first is the 1-chord that lasts 4 bars. In
the key of A, obviously the 1-chord is going
to be an A. After that, you get 2 bars of
the 4-chord. In our case, that’s a D chord,
then 2 more bars of the A-chord. Then we get
1 bar of the 5-chord - that’s an E chord
for us - followed by one bar of a 4-chord,
then finishing up with 2 final bars of 
the 1-chord.
So if 
this is our form, and we wanted to play the
simplest blues bass line to get through it,
we’d just play our 8th note line just on
the roots. I’ve got a sneaky play along
here, so if we played this line with this
track, it’d sound like this. [plays swung
8th note line] Simple as! You can also play
a similar line if the song you’re playing
with has straight 8th notes. That might sound
like this. [plays straight 8th note line]
You can hear this kind of line in Lafayette
Leake’s song Short Dressed Woman if you’re
looking for a swung example or Led Zeppelin’s
Rock and Roll if you’re wanting a straight
8ths example. Both follow the blues form perfectly.
Let’s move onto blues bass line formula
#2 - and that’s an 8th note bass line embellished
with the 5th. Instead of playing just the
roots, you’ll now play the root on every
beat and the 5th on every off-beat. It’ll
sound something like this. [plays blues bass
line formula #2]
This one is probably more suitable if the
tempo is slower and it works especially well
if the 8th notes are swung. Just check out
John Mayer’s Everyday I Have The Blues and
listen to the Pino Palladino bass line - it’s
incredible and it’s based mostly on this
kind of idea.
Blues bass line formula #3 - This is where
we start getting more active and using more
notes. This formula uses the 1, 5th and 7th
of every chord. So if we’re playing A, the
1-chord, we’ll use these notes [plays notes]
A, E, G, the 1, 5th and 7th of the chord -  and
of course the high A as well. And the formula
is simple - just go 1 - 5 - 7 - 1 every bar
for every chord. [plays bass line] Over the
A - over the D and over the E. You can also
double every note if you want as well. If
we played with the track, that’d sound like
this. [plays blues bass line formula #3 with
track] If you want a real world example of
this bass line in action, check out the Buddy
Guy song My Time After A While - prime example
of this kind of blues bass line.
Let’s check out blues bass formula #4 now.
This one is kind of like #3, but arranged
slightly differently. Instead of going 1 - 5
- 7 - 1, we’re going to go 1, then the octave
of 1, then drop down to the 7th, then the
5th. It’s like the descending version of
formula #3. It sounds like this [plays bass
line] And if every note is doubled - and with
this particular bass line, it usually is,
it’ll sound like this. [plays formula #4
with track] This is a very stereotypical kind
of line. This is the kind of line that people
associate with a lot of blues bass lines because
it happens a lot. Check out Jaco’s Fannie
Mae for a good example of this one. He throws
in a bunch of other fancy stuff as well, like
these kinds of triplets. [plays triplet bass
line] It’s like a small variation of the
original idea.
For blues bass line formula #5, we’re going
to add some new notes into the mix. In this
case, our formula will be 1 - 3 - 5 - 6 That’s
what we’ll play over every chord. That’ll
look like this. [plays bass notes] Over the
A - A, C#, E, F#. The D-chord we’ll have
D, F#, A and B and over the E chord, we’ll
have E, G#, B and C#. This formula is pretty
flexible - there’s a lot that we can do
with it.
We can start out just playing 4 notes to the
bar - almost like a classic walking bass line.
[plays bass line] We could double the notes
to make it more of a shuffle blues bass line.
[plays shuffle bass line] We can go up to
the 6th and back down to the 5th - and if
we straighten the 8th notes, this would be
like a Jailhouse Rock type of line [plays
Jailhouse Rock line] This is a classic rock
and roll kind of line. This is similar to
the kind of bass line you’d hear in the
Blues Brothers track ‘Shake Your Tailfeather’.
After you play the 6th, you can go up to the
root of the chord and then back down the other
notes. [plays bass line] 1-3-5-6-1-6-5-3.
And that’ll work over all the other chords
as well. If you check out the Jimmy Dawkins
song Little Angel Child, you’ll hear this
exact kind of bass line, but as a shuffle
- every note doubled. [plays Little Angel
Child bass line]
I hope you see here - our formula through
all these different lines is just 1 - 3 - 5
- 6, but the possibilities for using them
is nearly endless. The 6 on the top of the
line is super melodic and it opens up even
more possibilities for you to use. By the
way, all of these examples as well as links
to the recordings I’ve been talking about
can be found in tab form as well as notation
in the description of this video - totally
free.
So now we get to our 6th and final blues bass
line formula. This one is kind of a mixture
of everything we’ve had so far. It uses
the 1, 3, 5, and 6 of formula #5, but combined
with the 7th note of each chord that we had
in formulas #3 and #4. The final formula is
1-3-5-6-7-6-5-3. You’ve probably heard this
kind of line before. [plays bass line] This
is the kind of line you’d hear in Elvis’
‘Blue Suede Shoes’ - it’s a total classic
blues bass line. Now this is a 2-bar phrase,
so if you’re playing it over the whole form,
you need to be a little bit careful. You have
to modify it so it works over the 5-chord
and the 4-chord in the last phrase because
they only last 1 bar. So you might just play
the first 4 notes and then move on. With the
track, that’d sound like this [plays blues
bass line formula #6 with track]
Again, if you wanted to, you could totally
double all the notes and make it more of a
shuffle type of groove. That’d sound like
this. [plays shuffle blues bass line] Of course
you can always straighten out the 8th notes
if that’s what the song calls for. [plays
straight blues bass line]
Once you know all these formulas, you can
actually start playing them with other people
and start making real music. Now you don’t
have to be tied to playing just one of these
blues bass lines for the whole song. You can
mix and match and go between all of them - sometimes
even in the one song. Just be careful to change
at the top of a form to avoid confusing your
bandmates. It could feel really strange if
you went from formula #2 to #6 in the 7th
bar of the form, so make sure you change at
the beginning of the 12-bar blues form.
Now I know I’ve just thrown a whole lot
of stuff at you but don’t worry if you haven’t
taken all of it in yet. You can download the
tabs and notation of all these bass lines,
plus a few variations from becomeabassist.com.
Just click the link in the description, fill
out the form on that page and I’ll send
them straight to your email address totally
free. I’ll even throw in the backing tracks
I’ve been using in this video - just a special
gift from me to you so you can get started
playing with these bass lines right now. Just
click that link and get started - it’s 100%
free and 100% fun.
To recap really quickly though, you learned
6 authentic blues bass line formulas that
will work every time. You learned the simplest
was just an 8th note bass line on all the
roots of the chords. Formula #2 added the
5th of each chord to the mix. Blues bass line
formula #3 was all about the ascending 1-5-7-1
and formula #4 was kind of the like the descending
version. 1-1-7-5. Formula #5 was super versatile
and flexible and added the 6th so we got 1-3-5-6
and finally our last bass line formula was
the 2 bar phrase 1-3-5-6-7-6-5-3-1.
Thanks so much for sticking around. This has
been a ton of fun for me and I hope you’ve
got a lot out of it as well. Make sure to
click that link in the description to get
the tabs, notation and practice tracks from
this lesson - they’ll be super handy for
you. I’m Luke from Become A Bassist and
I’ll see you in another video somewhere.
