Beginner Improvisation For Bass Players
Hey there, bass players!
I’m excited to share with you a new eBook to help you improvise on the bass, work on your reading skills, and familiarize yourself with chord progressions.
Beginner Improvisation For Bass Players: Navigating Chord Progressions with a Soulful Groove
This eBook includes nine sections of bass exercises to help you systematically integrate root notes, arpeggios on the bass, register changes, pentatonic lines, and scalar movement as you move through common chord progressions. It’s designed to introduce your hands and ears to common bass themes so that you can confidently apply these concepts as you begin to improvise.
Crafted For The Beginner Bass Player
This is meant to be easy and accessible, especially for beginner bass players or guitarists who want to play bass. We’re working in one key—the key of A—and the rhythmic framework is consistent throughout the exercises. It alludes to a familiar groove in classic soul, R&B, pop, or rock music. While some of the patterns get busier as you progress, the goal is to focus on good note choices without having to worry about rhythmic complexity. Many of these exercises pull from bass lines by Duck Dunn, James Jamerson, Bob Babbitt, Joe Osborn, and David Hood, so this will have you playing soul music in no time!
Chord Progressions For Bass
It’s all about understanding how chord progressions work on the bass. As you play through the exercises, you’ll see that they cater to movement between the tonic chord (the I) and the chord that will come next in a progression. This will help you understand interval relationships. Knowing interval relationships will help you learn songs, improve your knowledge of the fretboard, and understand the “good-sounding” options as you prepare to add fills or compose bass lines.
Bass Exercises For All Keys
These concepts can be applied to all other keys. While each exercise is in the key of A, they are written with diatonic harmony in mind. That means that the interval relationships—and the “good-sounding notes”—can apply to any song following the rules of diatonic harmony. Fun fact: most songs in the genres of rock, pop, soul, funk, country, and Americana will play by these rules. Once you’re able to identify the key the song is in, you can apply these exercises to that key.
Tools for Improvising On the Bass
This is just the beginning. There are infinite combinations of notes, rhythmic variations, exceptions to the rule, and creative choices that you can make while improvising or composing. My goal with this booklet is to gently introduce you to this concept—the fact that you can create interesting bass lines by understanding how to move from chord to chord.
Think Like A Bass Player
Plenty of guitarists wake up one morning and say, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to play bass?” You bet it would. If you have some knowledge of the fretboard, making the transition from guitar to bass can be relatively easy, but approaching music as a bass player may be more challenging. Having some “basic chops” can help you relate to bandmates, lay down bass on your own recordings, and develop an appreciation for what a bass player actually does in a band. By working through these exercises, you’ll gain insight into the thought process of a bass player. This will help you define harmony, establish a clear rhythmic pulse, and integrate passing tones with the bass player's mindset.
Head over to the eBook Page to download! Then head over to the store to purchase the play-along tracks for all of the examples!
If you have any questions or would like to reach out for additional learning resources (lessons, videos, etc.), please get in touch!