Boogie-Woogie on Variation 2

You will most often hear the boogie-woogie bassline applied to variation 2 of the blues. While it does get used in most other blues forms – and even in songs that aren’t the blues – this is the version you want to really have down in the early stages of your bass playing.

Cutting the Two-Bar Pattern Short

The important difference in this version of the boogie-woogie pattern is in bars 9 and 10. In bars 9 and 10 we only have one bar of each chord. Since the full boogie-woogie bassline is a two-bar pattern, it won't fit in its complete form. As a result, on the V chord in bar 9 you only play the first half of the pattern and on the IV chord in bar 10 you only play the first half of the pattern. It shouldn’t take too much adjusting and it should sound pretty natural to you if you've heard this bassline before.

Boogie-Woogie Examples

On the boogie-woogie exercises page, I included a quarter note version of the bassline. That’s the most common variety of this bassline. I also included a shuffle eighth note version that is also fairly common and a little more challenging for beginners.

Take your time and build up your tempo gradually using a metronome. And, don’t forget to practice in those other keys!