Bass Guitar Blues Scales

Blues scales are really anything that sounds “bluesy” to you. A bass guitar scale is made to sound blues-like by flattening some of the notes in the major scale. Examples of these that are covered in other posts include the bass guitar minor scale and the bass guitar pentatonic minor scale.

If we want to take these bass blues scales to the next level there are a few other alternatives that we can use. One of them is add a flattened 5th to our minor scale thus getting this note combination: 1 - 2 -b3 - 4 -b5 - 6 -b7 -8. This bass guitar scale is best used as an alternative to the minor scale over chord changes rather than replacing the minor scale throughout an entire song. Timing the use of the flattened 5th is crucial to this bass guitar scale sounding “cool” and not like a mistake.

Another scale that sounds like a bass blues scale is to only flatten the 5th and the 7th notes and leave the 3rd as is. This scale gives a much more jazzy /blues sound then a full on minor scale. In the key of C your scale would be as follows: C -D - E -F - Gb - A -Bb -C . In this case timing of the Gb is everything. If this note is played at the wrong time it just won’t sound right.

One last bass guitar scale that works as blues scale for bass is to only flatten the 7th note.  Definitely more jazzy then a full out minor scale , this scale is very forgiving in its use and can be played under virtually any chord changes in a key. Great for adding blues feel to an otherwise non-blues song.

I hope this adds some new bass guitar scales to your arsenal of tricks, and I wholeheartedly recommend experimenting with blues sounds by trying out flattening other notes in your major scale and see what you come up with.