Stuck in the Middle Bass Study

by Ari • 25 Jul 2023 — 1 minute read

Stealer’s Wheel’s Stuck in the Middle has a great bass groove. Here I go beyond just playing it by making a fun and challenging drill out of it! As deceptively simple as that bass line is, this is quite the fretboard challenge! Try it for yourself!

Free TAB and diagrams here

#A17

Video Transcript

This is an awesome bass groove!

[🎵🎵🎵 Ari playing the groove 🎵🎵🎵 ]

What does this groove do? 1 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 5 – 6 -1- 1 – 7 – 2 – 3 – 5 – 6 – 5.

It goes back and forth between the regular major pentatonic and the dominant pentatonic [ 🎵🎵🎵 ]. You can also look at it as a dominant seven chord plus the 2 [ 🎵🎵🎵 ].

Play this groove from the song through the cycle of fifths to the left trying to stay in one area:

[🎵🎵🎵 Ari playing the groove through the cycle 🎵🎵🎵 ]

 

You might also like:

👉 The Story behind the Riff in Smoke on the Water

👉 This post about shifts on the fretboard

👉 I play on my Marleaux Basses

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Bassist, author, educator.

Groove enthusiast and learning nerd.

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Hi. I'm Ari.

As a bassist, I have toured/played/recorded with a variety of rock, Jazz, and funk bands, I have worked with some incredible producers (Keith Olsen) and musicians (Paul Hanson, Muriel Anderson) and I toured Brazil with Stu Hamm as a duo.

 

As a bass teacher, I have taught at London Bass Day, Gerald Veasley’s Bass Boot Camp, SBL, Truefire, notreble… I even ran my own music school for a few years before gigs took me back on the road.

 

One thing to know about me is that I teach because I am absolutely fascinated with the learning process. And I am obsessed with helping others realize their musical potential.

 

When I started playing bass, I excelled very quickly because I had an amazing teacher who taught me using a powerful method. This method transformed my playing so quickly that I passed a bunch of high-level university auditions and even tested out of entire classes at university even though I had been playing for only a very short time.

 

That’s what, many years later turned into one of my books, co-written with Wolf Wein, called “The Pattern System for the Bass Player”. I created entire systems of learning based on some of these ideas and wrote books and created courses together with Wolf. Our bass books have sold over 30,000 copies and garnered rave reviews.

 

I started teaching online in 2009 and have embraced technology as a powerful learning tool since then, never losing sight of the importance of providing feedback and personalized guidance to learners.

 

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