My Five Favorite Basslines

Posted on June 4th, 2023

If you don't know, I love bass.

I love how it sounds and rumbles between my ears and my brain. I've been playing bass for about 2 years now. I own 2 basses:

A Fender Squier J Bass:

And a Yamaha RBX 260 (that I bought of my neighbor for $150, he knew the price he could sell it for but he was really nice and gave me a huge discount, originally offering $100 but I felt bad):

In my free time of playing bass, I've found myself infatuated with these particular basslines. I'm not really rating this based on skill or technicality, just more of how fun it is to play. I'll try to limit my basslines to one per artist although I'm pretty I'm going to break that rule. (Also yes that blanket is fucking awesome and better than yours). Let's start:

5. Roving Eye by James Chance and the Contortions

This ones a simple one, but it's so effective. It has kind of a bluesy almost rock 'n roll sound to it but with a funky rhythm. It sort of has a devious feeling to it, which works with the lyrics and overall vibe of the song cuz I’m pretty sure the song is about not really being loyal to any partner and being an asshole overall (lol). The whole song is great, it has this really distorted guitar lead that just destroys your ears (in a good way) and the free form improv section is awesome.

Here's the tab for the main part (there is a tab on ultimate guitar tabs but this is how I like to play it)

G |--------------------7-5--|
D |---------8h6-8h6-------|
A |--x-8-8-----------------|
(You only need the top 3 strings to play this part)
Also check out my tab that I made for another James Chance song, Throw Me Away: