Blues bass lines

Blues bass lines are built from a handful of patterns that every bassist knows. They are made of the notes of the dominant 7th chord, plus one colour note.

The ingredients

A dominant 7th chord has 1 3 5 ♭7. Blues bass lines use these, often with the 6 as an extra colour note. These standard one-bar patterns, written as degrees of each chord, work in eighth notes or quarter notes, with a shuffle feel:

• 1 – 5 – 6 – 5: the basic boogie pattern;
• 1 – 5 – 6 – ♭7;
• 1 – 3 – 5 – 6 – ♭7 – 6 – 5 – 3: the full boogie line over one bar of eighths.

Each pattern is a shape: play it from the root of I7, then the same shape from IV7 and V7 (lesson 4.3).

A whole chorus

Here is one 12-bar chorus in A with the 1–5–6–5 pattern on each chord.

In bar 12, use a turnaround: for example a walk-up or a chromatic approach into the root of I (lesson 9.4). These are generic patterns from the blues tradition; the lines here are original.