Bass Scale Patterns

In some of the main posts I’ve already covered some of the bass scales box patterns as far as major and minor bass scales. On this page I’d like to get into some patterns that are little bit more spread out up and down the neck. These are the bass scale patterns you might use if you’re walking up the neck to catch a chord or if you’re playing some blues, these work great for doing non stop walking down or up under some cool guitar riffs.

For all of these patterns I have denoted the circle with the “X” in it as your root note. I have 3 patterns for both major and minor bass scales, each one starting on a different string. Your job is to learn all three and then combine them so that you can literally play the scales all over the fretboard on your bass.

First let’s look at the major bass scales. Comparing the second picture to the first you can see how the next pattern’s first note is indicated on the first pattern. We are basically starting the next pattern on the second “X” in the first scale pattern. Transition the same way from the 2nd pattern to the 3rd. Now if you laid these patterns over top of one another you would see some missing notes dues to the fact that I have not repeated any notes in any of the patterns.  The standard box patterns that I’ve shown you in these posts: Major scales and  Minor scales will fill in those missing notes.

Bass Major Scale Root Note 1st String

Bass Major Scale Root Note 2nd String

Bass Major Scale Root Note 3rd String

Now let’s look at the minor bass scales. Remember that to make a minor scale we flatten both the third and seventh notes in the major scale.

Bass Minor Scale Root Note 1st String

Bass Minor Scale Root Note 2nd String

Bass Minor Scale Root Note 3rd String

Between these patterns and the ones in previous posts  you should be able to cover major and minor bass scales all over the neck of your bass.