How To Play Bass

Learn songs not scales

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Beginners Bass Songs – Green Onions

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Most people think that the late, great Duck Dunn played the bass line to Green Onions by Booker T And The MGs, but in fact it was Lewis Steinberg.

When I came to prepare the lesson I isolated the bass line in Anytune software and was surprised to find that it’s just a quarter note based line. As well as playing it this way in the first video below I’ll also play it how it’s commonly played by cover bands (and how I played it for years). Once you get beyond the intro (and be careful, on different versions of the song this intro can be 4 bars long!) the bass line is just a simple 12 bar line that’s repeated over and over without variation for the duration of the song.

I class this as a Level 3 bass line. (The scale I use is 1 to 10 – a Level 1 bass line might be a predominantly half note ballad kind of line like Imagine and a Level 10 line would be an uptempo 8th note based line like I Saw Her Standing There or Shake A Tailfeather).

Here’s how it was originally played – there’s notation and tab in the video:

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Comments

  1. Looks & sounds good. I saw a video of “Duck” playing it with Booker T and he didn’t take the ‘shortcut’ on the C runs, he played them the same as the F & A# runs. Nice to get a bit of a rest doing it the way you show [guess I have short fingers 🙂 ].

    Thanks for posting the video.

    • Hey Bj

      The last time I saw a clip of Duck playing this live my memory is that the band took it a madcap pace! I wasn’t watching for how he played it then, but interesting that he just moves the pattern upwards.

  2. Hi. I think I’m a little bit above beginner, not being arrogant.. I love the sound of a electric bass. I have a Yamaha four string. I seen and listen to you on YouTube many times… Could you please do me a favorite? I’m trying to learn the bass notes to the song HEAVEN HOOKED US UP, by the isley brothers. I want to play this song for my girlfriend.. Please help me, thanks!!!!

    • hey troy

      my request list is not open at this point in time I’m afraid.

      paul

  3. Thank you so much. I love the Tuesday lessons and this is a wonderful bonus.

    I took the beginner lesson course and learned so much.

    • Thanks Paulo. Keep a look out as there will be a slew more of these coming.

  5. I’ve been playing for man years, but watching very fine local players caused me to look back, review, and re-learn basics. Your emails and utube material are great for this. Thanks for the assist!