Skip to main content

A Blues Bass Line

The best thing about a jazz swing bass line is it does 2 things. The first is it is supposed to outline the chord changes very clearly. The second is in it's main function it insists on being played on each beat. A great way to study chords and improvisation is to play bass lines. This doesn't have to be strict for our purposes. By this I mean you don't have to stick to the low end of your instrument. If you're not a bass player just play quarter notes and outline the chords. Below is an example of a simple blues bass line.

Meet Mike Blake

Meet Mike Blake. He's a subscriber on the site, and great percussionist, drummer and vibe player who teaches out at University of North Dakota.

He's really well respected and loved in the vibe world. I know that from just mentioning his name to Ed and Joe.

Here he talks about himself and the vibraphone a little.

Vibes channel for Roku Players

Hi All,

In the near future I'll probably be working on developing a commercial channel for Roku Players -- as a learning experience, I figured I could get started by developing a vibes channel.

So what's a Roku Player? It's a box that connects on one side to your TV, on the other to your home network, and allows you to play streaming videos from the Internet on your TV. It's main claim-to-fame is that it allows you to play Netflix instant movies on your TV. If you have a Netflix account and don't have a Roku or something similar (like Xbox), you should really get one.