Bass Guitar Lesson - Fusing the Blues Scale with Funk

Professor Jim’s Rock School

 

There are 12 audio tracks available for download that go with this lesson. See full
track listing at the end of the lesson.

 

In this lesson I am going to teach you the blues scale then I am going to show you a song I wrote a while back that utilizes every single note of the scale. The song is a hip funk groove that will take a little work to get under your fingers, but it has a slammin’ groove!

Before we get ahead of ourselves with the funky groove let us dive into the blues scale. The blues scale is a six tone scale that contains the Root, minor third; Perfect fourth, diminished fifth, Perfect fifth, and the minor seventh. For those of you that have learned the Minor Pentatonic scales it is the Minor Pentatonic scale with a b5 added. In the key of F it would look like this;

 

F Ab Bb B C Eb F
R b3  4  b5 5 b7  R 

 

The b5 note is often referred to as the “Blues Tri-Tone” and most effectively is used as a passing
tone where you do not pause or stop on the note but play through it to add the Blues color to your Bass lines.

Although this scale is most at home in blues rhythm and improvisation, I always teach my students to feel free to cross breed different genres of music to deepen their own individual sound and playing style. Countless artists have done this very same concept over the years as well.

 

Here is the F blues scale as it relates to your bass fretboard; 

 

 

To really master this scale you should try playing it in different feels like quarter notes, swing eighths, triplets, and sixteenth notes. I recorded all of these with tips on execution in the accompanying down loadable audio files for this lesson.

Now that you have the concept and feel of the blues scale down, we are going to apply this scale in a hip funk groove. I call this tune Fun-key Lil’ Mon-Key. I have recorded audio files in several formats to help you get this groove together. There is a track for both the A and B sections where I play the sections with a metronome. Then, there is tracks where I play each section over a straight 4/4 drum beat. Finally there is a full band with bass audio track and band minus bass jam-along track until next time, keep Rockin’ N’ Rollin’!!!!

 -Professor Jim

The Downloadable Audio Track Listing:

Download all these practice tracks for just $2.99.

1. Bass Tuning Notes
2. Fusing the Blues with Funk: the Blue Scale using Quarter notes
3. Fusing the Blues with Funk: the Blue Scale using swing Eighth notes
4. Fusing the Blues with Funk: the Blue Scale using Triples
5. Fusing the Blues with Funk: the Blue Scale using Sixteenth notes
6. Fusing the Blues with Funk: Fun-key Lil’ Monkey A Section with Metronome
7. Fusing the Blues with Funk: Fun-key Lil’ Monkey B Section with Metronome
8. Fusing the Blues with Funk: Fun-key Lil’ Monkey A Section over 4/4 Drum Beat
9. Fusing the Blues with Funk: Fun-key Lil’ Monkey B Section over 4/4 Drum Beat
10. Fusing the Blues with Funk: Fun-key Lil’ Monkey 4/4 Drum Beat for practice
11. Fusing the Blues with Funk: Fun-key Lil’ Monkey Full Band
12. Fusing the Blues with Funk: Fun-key Lil’ Monkey Guitar and Drum Backing Track

Click Here For All Bass Lesson Audio Downloads

©2009 Jim Rutkowski & Fred Russell Publishing, All Rights Reserved. This article can not be used without permission from the Author. To Contact the Author email curt@RockHouseMethod.com