Blues Study Piece for Double Bassists

In this lesson I teach you how to play my tune ‘Gig House Blues’. It’s a fun jazz study piece for upright bassists which gets you to work on the middle area of the fingerboard. You really need to be shifting carefully to play this one in tune, so make sure you focus in on any tricky corners. The piece is a standard three chord blues progression in E which uses a lot of blues scale riffs and fills.

Whilst filming the video I decided to do an extra bonus lesson, where I demonstrate an alternative version of this piece which uses several extra chords, making the line harder to play in tune. I was using these to thicken out the sound and give me something fun to practice with whilst working on playing chords on the double bass, which is a great thing to do if you want to improve your hand shape and left hand dexterity. I’ve added the extra video below and I hope you find it useful.

The transcription and backing track for these lessons are included the Discover Double Bass Lessons Guide.