Understanding The Basics Of Blues Bass Guitar
Typical blues music is written using 12 bar progressions along with turnarounds, to the beginning of the progression, as well as providing fill and dead spots created when the blues guitar rests. Knowing the blues scale, understanding chord variations and having a good sense of the blues rhythm make playing the blues bass guitar like falling off a log for most musicians.
Originally, blues bass guitar was played on an upright bass, similar to jazz music through the same time period, but as electric bass guitars became more popular, their use in playing the blues greatly increased. An electric blues bass guitar allows for sustaining notes longer, especially between chord changes allowing it to provide more fill throughout the duration of the song. It also proves smoother chord transitions, or changes and allows the blues bass guitar to offer slides and its own style to create turnarounds during progressions.
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In addition to basic talent and knowledge of the location of notes on a blues bass guitar the player also needs to have more of a feel for the music. Most of the pioneers of blues music did not know how to read music, but their understanding of playing complimentary bass notes to match the chords or licks provided by the blues guitarists were discovered simply by listening to the songs and the chord pregressions.