The Chicken For Beginners Part 2 

5 Killer Bass Fills 

 
Hey - welcome to eBassGuitar.Com!  
James here… if this is your first time on 
eBassGuitar.com, I want to say a massive 
hello and welcome you to the tribe! We’re 
here to help rookie through to 
intermediate bass players make progress 
faster than they ever thought possible. We 
do this by breaking complex ideas down 
into w​hat to play and why you should play 
it. 
 
In today’s bass guitar lesson I’m going to show you how to play killer bass 
fills using the legendary Jaco Pastorious groove from the Pee Wee Ellis 
Tune ‘The Chicken’. 
Every so often I release a bass guitar lesson which has that ‘little bit of 
magic’... 
...and I get question after question from students who want to delve 
deeper and find out more. 
A couple of weeks back we released a lesson called ​The Chicken for 
Beginners​ I broke down and simplified the legendary Jaco Pastorious bass 
line. 
I’ve been asked time and time again if I can share some of the ideas I’m 
using to create the bass fills when I’m just jamming at the beginning and 
end of the video. 

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So I thought about it hard: First analysed what I was playing and then 
thought about how best to teach it to you with an easy to understand, 
simple and above all logical progression. 
 
Hopefully this will give you some ideas on where ​Part One of The Chicken 
For Beginners Lesson​ can be taken… but also share some of the secrets of 
how Jaco Pastorious created his infamous 16th Note Funk Feel! 
 
Here’s the original bass line and the 5 fills written out in standard notation 
and tab. 
 

Original Bass Line 

Fill 1 

Fill 2 

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Fill 3 

 
 

Fill 4 

Fill 5 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Lesson Wrap Up 

The secret to creating bass fills using the 16th note funk feel can be a 
simple as creating subtle variations to the original bass line or groove. Just 
altering the notes of one beat can have a dramatic effect... 
If you’re a beginner to intermediate bass player and want to take this 
lesson to the next level we have a whole Walking Bass Course and Bass 
Line Creation course inside the Bass Lab PLUS membership. - Join FREE 
Today with a 14 day trial. 
Both courses are easy to understand and simplify complex ideas so bass 
players in the early phases of learning can make rapid progress and 
achieve results that impress their friends and family fast. 
Good luck and get stuck in! 
James 
 
 

   

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Players 
 
 

 
 

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Keep grooving hard…  
James 
 

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The Ultimate Online Bass Guitar Lessons Platform For Rookie To Intermediate Bass 
Players