Upright Bass: C# Blues Over the Changes

C# Blues runs 6 notes to the octave, laid out here on EADG with every C# flagged. Mid-chorus the pattern is not what you need; where the root is when the chord changes underneath you is.

The minor pentatonic with a b5 "blue note" wedged in — that one extra note adds grit, tension, and a sly, vocal quality. Tough, expressive, and unmistakably bluesy.

Heard in: Blues, rock, jazz, rhythm and blues, and boogie-woogie — Delta and Chicago blues, Hendrix, Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

The upright takes a chorus less often than anyone, and that is exactly why these matter: the notes between one chord root and the next come out of a scale, and a walk that lands on the wrong one is the loudest wrong note in the room.

Play it slowly against the audio until it stops being a shape, then put it over two bars of a form and let the chord tones decide which of the notes you actually keep.