Bass lines you can play at home
The song title really is spelled that way. Take that, Prince.
Larry Graham invented slap bass. I also learned from this Thundercat video that he's Drake's uncle. I don't know where to put that information. Slap bass is fairly divisive. Some people hate it in that way that people say "I like every kind of music except country." I think if you're going to mess around with slapping your bass, this the line you should start with. Incidentally, I think this very song has the line slap bass started with. I feel like there's a joke here about Larry Graham birthing slap bass and slapping it like a newborn, but it's not coming together, so forget I mentioned it. This dude will show you how to play the line. If you aren't in the mood to work it out.
This bassline is simple, but it never stops being funky. You can play it on the keyboard even if you're not a keyboard player. You can hack it on a bass if you're a guitar player. I like to use this line to practice left hand muting when I'm playing finger-style. One of the tricky aspects to left hand muting is playing everything with one finger, essentially moving your entire left hand for every note. This line is slow enough that you can get the feel of it without getting caught up in the athletics. This track is also 15 goddamn minutes long. I think if you play along to the entire track start to finish it could be considered guided meditation. If you start to think the bass line is too simple and not worthy of your time, try playing it and singing the head at the same time. If that doesn't twist your brain into a pretzel at least the first couple times, you are cool, and we should hang out more. 4 chromatic notes up to the Bb, then pop the 6 and flat 7 (G and Ab). Same figure up a 4th. For 15 minutes. Goddamn.
you know, that song in which they say "We want the funk" over and over, but didn't feel compelled to put that in the title?
Bootsy Collins, a rhinestone rock star of a doll, baby bobba. The bass line in the verse is crazy. It's not insurmountable, but I'm only talking about the bass line in the chorus here. It's three notes, and it's awesome. It's a great example of "play the root note on the 1 and make it huge...then do other stuff". I think beginners can play this bass line as only 8th notes and still get into the funk feel of it. More technical bass players can add the 16th pickups and little fills Bootsy is doing to really funk it out. The song's in E, and there's a big open low E in there, but it's not obnoxious in a slap-bass-in-a-music-store way. Here's a decent walkthrough of the line.
- Tyler 2020_04_17