Learning scales is essential to honing your bass playing abilities. Scales allow you to produce more melodic bass lines and make improvising much simpler.
Fingerboard grids illustrate how to position your fingers on a bass fretboard for different scales and shapes, with solid black dots representing notes to be played while open circles indicate root notes.
Major
Scales are an invaluable part of every bassist’s toolbox, serving as the basis for riff creation and helping avoid awkward note combinations that don’t sound right together. Regular practice of scales acts like musical push-ups; doing it regularly will develop your ear as you create memorable bass lines that keep people tapping their feet!
A major scale contains seven notes and is constructed using intervals (the distance between notes in both whole note and half note forms) in a pattern that repeats every octave. To play one, one begins at its root note before moving up through its notes one at a time – adding new ones each time!
Once you know one major scale pattern, all others follow its intervals; memorizing their fingerboard diagram shapes will help you quickly master them all on the fretboard and make improvisation simpler as well.
First and foremost, you should learn and memorize the C Major scale, which spans four frets and contains all notes in G Major key. G Major contains C, D, E, F G A B with open E string bass guitar playing techniques often employed when performing it.
To practice the C Major scale, locate the green notes on the fretboard diagram below and place your left hand fingers over them. Note that fingerings above may differ from standard; nonetheless this practice session can help you learn how to play this scale as well as position your left hand on the fretboard.
Be familiar with the chords that this scale can be used to play. If you don’t already know them, practice playing over these major chords using a bass guitar tuner and watch videos of your favorite bassists playing them online to see their approach.
Pentatonic scales are one of the most frequently employed scales in bass music. They work well across most chords and are very straightforward to play – you could even use them to compose solo bass pieces!
Minor
Bassists who understand how to play minor scales can create bass lines that add depth and character to any song or piece. A minor scale has its own distinct sound due to the intervals between its notes; just like major scales it contains seven notes with different intervals that create its distinctive sound.
This scale is an excellent starting point, being versatile across many genres of music and easy for beginners to grasp quickly. Based on a slightly altered pattern from major pentatonic, blues scale is another variation based on minor pentatonic with one additional note added (an augmented fifth), adding low-end grit and soulfulness for which blues music is so famous.
The augmented fifth is used in jazz and rock, creating tension by raising all other notes by one semitone – adding drama and tension to bass lines. Furthermore, an augmented fifth can also be used for chromatic bass runs; this involves taking steps up and down the scale with the goal of returning back to your starting note – perfect if playing over chord progressions with lots of dissonance!
On this page, the bass scales are presented both in TAB notation and as moveable fretboard patterns to allow you to easily position them wherever on the fretboard you wish for tonic note playback.
Once you’ve mastered Major and Minor Scales, it’s time to branch out with more genre-based bass scales that will add some flare and interest to your bass lines! Below you will find a list of popular music bass scales along with their scale patterns and TAB. Try these bass scales out in your songs or jam sessions for added flare, but remember to practice regularly to increase speed and fluency!
Pentatonic
The pentatonic scale is one of the most frequently-used bass guitar scales. Consisting of just five notes derived from major scale notes (fourth and seventh), its patterns can be used for playing melodic bass lines or as the basis for more complex riffs.
Pentatonic scales can be broken down into five individual notes that can all be found across different fretboard positions, creating melodic bass lines for any chord progression.
Pentatonic scale is not only an invaluable improvising tool; it is also an effective method for developing strength and control over the fingerboard. Please follow the tabs provided here as indicated, with green circles representing tonic notes of each scale to allow easy moving up and down fretboard with confidence.
Pentatonic scales can be an invaluable aid to new musicians looking to practice. By providing a consistent way for you to navigate around the fretboard with consistent accuracy, pentatonic scales provide an ideal way to hone your fretboard skills with consistent accuracy. To start practicing these scales, select a minor pentatonic pattern and move up and down fretboard until familiarity with notes and positions has been gained. Be sure to play along with a metronome so you can improve rhythm and timing!
Once you’ve mastered playing a minor pentatonic scale, it’s time to challenge yourself further with something a bit more difficult – the blues scale. A popular choice for creating emotive bass lines, the blues scale is comprised of minor pentatonic notes with one extra note added called the blues note that adds tension with its unmistakable feel.
One of the hallmarks of blues scale is its flexibility – one of its distinctive traits being how well it works over either minor or major chord progressions. This makes it a useful scale to know when improvising because it allows players to freely improvise over any key without risk of hitting clashing notes.
Blues
Blues music provides bassists with a distinctive low-end sound. To play blues scale effectively, an additional note must be added – usually an chromatic “blue note” to either pentatonic minor or major pentatonic scales – that contributes its soulful sound.
When played correctly, the blues scale creates tension before releasing it at exactly the right moment for an emotional effect. Its use has become so widespread among musical genres such as blues, rock and metal; even non-chromatic genres employ chromatic notes; providing another avenue of expression and soulful emotion through music.
Beginners in bass should learn the blues scale as one of their first and primary bass scales; it provides an ideal jumping off point into jazz music. A variation on the pentatonic major or minor scale, it adds an additional sixth note which gives it its unique tone and feel.
To gain an understanding of the blues scale, use this chart and identify what chords each pattern matches up with. After that, practice improvising over those chords, experimenting with various voicings and variations as you practice improvising improv over them. When comfortable with that scale, move onto other bass scales like minor pentatonic and major pentatonic.
Blues scales can be invaluable tools when writing basslines and riffs, as they can be placed over any tonic note (green circle on chart) of the fretboard. Simply use movable scale patterns below and position them over any tonic note on your fretboard to play them in any octave; mixing and matching these shapes creates more complex multi-octave blues scales – to get you started, here are a few famous basslines and riffs featuring A minor blues scales! To help get you going, here are a few notable basslines and riffs which feature A minor blues scales: