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Bass Lines With Jaime Vazquez: Groove Variations Part I (One Chord Vamp)
Meet Jaime Vazquez –
Hello Everyone! We’re finally at the end of the year 2010! Thanks for all your support to BMM! We’re here for you!
We all know that repetition is a great tool and a standard for grooving. But hey! We can make some cool variations to our grooves without losing the idea and the essence of the rhythm section.
For this month, we will focus on something very common on great bass lines called the one chord vamp. You will find this on many classic songs. The one chord vamp gives you a lot of room for bass fills. So, it is the perfect moment to show your stuff. But always take care to not overplay. Remember, play for the song!
Figure 1a. Here we have the verse from a James Brown classic called Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine. The bass groove is courtesy of the amazing William “Bootsy” Collins. He always shows great maturity in his playing!
Figure 1b. This is the verse variation. On both grooves, there are a lot of eight notes, sixteenth notes and rests. See how the grooves have changed at the end of every bar. They’re known as bass fills. Don’t forget the rests, silence is musical too.
Figure 2a. The Top 10 Cissy Strut, by The Meters. This groove utilizes a swung sixteenth note feel with tension notes which provides contrast.
Figure 2b. Here’s the variation of the same groove but with more tension notes. Remember to accentuate the swing feel.
Figure 3a. Low Rider is a great example of an eight notes groove. A very cool song from the American funk band called War.
In this groove, we have slides, muted notes and hammer-ons, etc.
Figure 3b. The variations are at the end of the groove. This is common while grooving. The idea is to keep the essence of the main groove and ad some cool fills at the end. This will catch the attention and give you more colors and flavor to your grooves.
Figure 4a. Now let’s groove with Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers). This is the great groove from their hit By the Way. The interlude is based on Dm, Flea establishes the groove with eight notes at the beginning of every bar then he moves with a sixteenth note feel with hammer-ons and muted notes.
Figure 4b. Take care with the timing because the groove is very syncopated and aggressive. Note that he plays with a sixteenth note feel with hammer-ons and muted notes and he ends the groove with some tension notes.
When grooving over a one chord vamp, try rhythmic variations, emphasize the chord notes and combine them with chromatic passing tones (tension notes). Also, you can use ghost or muted notes, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, double stops, slap, etc. Play for the music style, if you are playing funk play funk and always locked up with the rhythm section. Happy Holidays!
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Photo: Self-portrait by Melissa Auf Der Maur
Melissa Auf Der Maur is a Canadian bassist who played with Tinker, Hole, and The Smashing Pumpkins. She released her own work and is a photographer with photos published in Nylon, Bust, and National Geographic. She released her ‘90s Rock Memoir “Even The Good Girls Will Cry” on 17 March 2026.
KB: Did you always want to be a singer-musician growing up?
I’ve played music my whole life. In school, I played trumpet and sang in a children’s choir, so music was always within me. My mother was the first female disc jockey on the Montreal airwaves; her record collection played a huge role in my inspiration and love of music.
KB: When did you start playing bass, and why this instrument?
When I was 19, the early 90s music explosion began to percolate in tiny clubs around the world. I was lucky to be a ticket girl at Montreal’s underground music club. In one year, I saw Hole, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, White Zombie, and The Breeders – all had female bass players. That’s when the seed was planted. By the age of 22, I was the bass player of Hole.
KB: Which brands of basses have you used in your career, and which one are you using now?
The first bass that I learned on was a vintage Squier Precision. Hole was sponsored by Fender guitars, so I upgraded to Fender Custom Shop Precisions. That is all I play, but I have a cool vintage 8-string Greco that I use on recordings to thicken up guitar parts.
KB: What equipment do you use or have you used with your basses?
Ampeg SVT amps and cabinets, a couple of Sans-Amp pedals, and that is it.
KB: How did you become a member of Hole, and what is your fondest memory of that time?
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was helping scout a replacement for (RIP) Kristen Pfaff, Hole’s bass player. My band, Tinker, opened for them on the Siamese Dream tour, so Billy had seen me play and could vouch for me. Courtney trusted her talented friend, and that was it. I initially said “no thank you” due to my commitment to my photographic studies and the drama and chaos surrounding the band during the “Live Through This” album release. Courtney took it as a good sign that I said no, so convinced me to reconsider, and soon after, I accepted their invitation, in the name of helping put females in the male-dominated landscape of rock music. My fondest memory is every show we played as a mostly female band, symbolizing what a woman could do in a rock band. Every show had a purpose: get more women to play music.
KB: You are a photographer as well. What makes a great picture? Do you shoot in color or b/w?
I started shooting photographs at age 15. Initially only shot black & white and worked in the art school darkroom. In university, I took a color photography course, and shifted mostly and forever to that, because it was easier to process film on the road when I joined a rock band. I experimented with many cameras, point and shoots, manual, polaroids, medium format, and vintage finds. The trick to a good photograph is to shoot many and all the time – the magic is in the edit and selection process.
KB: Are there artists you would love to collaborate with or wish you had?
??I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite musicians in my career. I would still love to collaborate with a new generation heavy electronic artist on an analog bass, heavy electronic drums, and synths collaboration project. Take me out of my usual zone, merging the past and future: my love of 80s dark new wave and new artists exploring that genre. It was very futuristic back then, and we are now, after all, living in the future. I am in the mood to play bass to heavy beats I want to dance to.
KB: What are your 7 favorite bass lines in music across all genres? And why these 7?
“Mountain Song” – Jane’s Addiction (love a rambling, rolling bass line – feels like the ocean waves)
“Black Top – Helmet” (was the first bass line I taught myself)
“Gold Dust Woman” – Hole from “The Crow 2” Soundtrack (it was my first bass line contribution to the band)
“Get Ready” – The Temptations (Motown just feels so good, because of the bass)
“Lucretia My Reflection” – Sisters of Mercy (makes me want to hit the dance floor and play bass simultaneously)
“Be My Druidess” – Type O Negative (full chord bass playing at its best by iconic, demonic, Peter Steele, RIP)
“Romantic Rights” – Death from Above (1979 – unique distorted overdriven tone, combined dance rhythm and melodic intelligence, all in one shot – also! Shout out to a bass & drum only band, which is awesome, and we should have more of, but the bass player needs to be a killer to fill that role.
KB: What are you currently up to?
Releasing my ‘90s Rock Memoir “EVEN THE GOOD GIRLS WILL CRY”. Visceral healing process, it was to get it out of me and write it, but I suspect the real magic will begin by putting it into the world and reflecting with others on what the magic of the ‘90s was all about. Powerful music decade that carried us into what is now a brave new world of digital corporate weirdness – may the past shed a light on our future. That’s my hope for this book release and tour.
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