Lesson Activities for Teaching Basslines

As part of learning bass clef letter names, I teach my 6th graders about basslines. They explore the role and importance of bass lines in music, perform and create basslines, and explore instruments that play basslines in different musical genres. This is a great way to not only give some context for learning bass clef but also explore basic harmony. Here are some of my favorite resources and lesson activities for teaching basslines.

It can be difficult to get students to understand the concept of a bassline when they are so used to listening to and performing melodies. One of the first things I do after introducing and practicing bass clef letter names is have them watch this video that visualizes the bassline in "Ain't No Mountain". It is SUCH a great way to help students to identify where the bassline is aurally when they aren't used to listening for it!

Next, to get them to experience and think more about the role the bassline plays in the overall piece, I have them listen to a song where the bassline comes in partway through the song and ask them to raise their hand when they hear the bassline come in (depending on the song it's often important to clarify that we're not listening for the chords/ harmony played by the guitar/ keyboard/ etc, but specifically the bassline- usually the electric bass). I've used different examples for this over the years, but the one I used last year and this year is The Scientist by Coldplay. 

Once they've practiced identifying the bassline and hearing the difference it makes when the bass comes in, we listen to September by Earth Wind and Fire with the bass part removed and then the original with bass, and we have a discussion about the role of the bassline in music in general. I sometimes show excerpts from this video to help concisely explain the importance of the bassline in music.

Then it's time to try playing a bassline! First we start with an easy chord progression where they can just play the root of the chord- you can actually use any ukulele/ guitar chord play-along for this, and just tell students to read the letter name at the beginning of the chord and ignore the little m's, 7's etc, but this year I used a guitar tab play-along video for Beat It by Michael Jackson. I usually do this with boomwhackers and use octavator caps to get the lower octave, but if your students are familiar enough with the keys, keyboards/ pianos would be a good way to have everyone play the whole bassline.

Once they try an easy one we talk a little about how most of the cool and interesting basslines don't just play one note for each measure- they do interesting things that make it an actual bass LINE! Then we try playing a basic walking bass line on boomwhackers with this play-along video, which is much more challenging but still attainable.

I also have students explore the many different instruments that perform the basslines in different genres by showing them some short video clips of live performances in different styles and asking them to identify who was performing the bass. I start this lesson by showing them my favorite electric bass solo of all time- Amazing Grace by Victor Wooten- and discuss basic and extended playing techniques they observe for the electric bass. After that I use different examples depending on the year, but this year since I taught these lessons during Hispanic Heritage Month I included this example of Five Beat Mambo by Tito Puente (this was the first one I showed them- it should be pretty easy to pick out the bass player since the rest are percussion!), and this performance of La Cigarra performed by Mariachi Flor de Toloache. I always include a singing example as well- a looped video like many creators post on social media is great because many of my students are familiar with the style of video and you can hear each part individually, like this one of the Grace Kelly trend from a few years ago.

The last part of these lessons, which actually comes up several weeks after the rest of the lesson activities, is creating their own basslines. After studying bass we move on first to learning about chords, and learn how to play some basic chords on ukulele, and then students create a chord progression to play on the ukulele. Then we come back to the idea of basslines by identifying the chord tones for each chord and using those chord tones to create and notate in bass clef a bassline. I have students put the notes they choose into Song Maker in Chrome Music Lab so they can add a percussion part and adjust the speed to play their chords along with the bassline/ percussion! I have all of the worksheets, teaching visuals, and lesson plans for this whole chord composition project in this set if you want to try this with your students.

I hope this gives you some fresh ideas to use with your older elementary and middle school students to learn about basslines! I think it's so important to contextualize anything students are learning, so if you teach bass clef, I highly recommend adding some or all of these lesson activities to the same grade's curriculum so they can understand the purpose of the lower register notes in different musical styles. You can find all of the lesson plans and materials for these lessons included in the 6th grade Organized Chaos curriculum as well!