Techniques Bass Guitar

Hi,

Here is a simple double tap exercise to make the bass more interesting.






Use your right hand (index and middle) fingers to simultaneously press on the 12th fret D and G string. Play around with rhythmic patterns.

Hope this exercise will help you explore more ways to create music with bass.

Cheers

Hi,

The exercise below will help us to understand the fretboard and explore more ways to play the Gmaj 7 arpeggio.













The proposed fingering can be changed to your preference.

Do try the fingering on other major chords like Cmaj7 and etc.

Have fun.

Hi,

Most of us are familiar with the Natural Minor Scale (Aeolian) but seldom practice the Melodic Minor Scale.

The formula for Melodic Minor Scale is 1 2 b3 4 5 6 7

Therefore the D Melodic Minor Scale will be D E F G A B C#





A simple exercise to try this scale is over the II V I progression in C

The chords are Dm7 G7 Cmaj7.

When the musicians play a G7 chord, try playing the D Melodic Minor Scale.

It is equivalent to a G dominant Lydian Scale. Sound even more jazzy now!

Have fun.

Hi,

If you are bored of playing the same minor pentatonic scale over and over again, try the below exercise.

It is quite a good stretch and breaks away from the standard pattern.

This is the C Minor Pentatonic Scale.




Try reversing the exercise from the 15th fret back to the 3rd fret.

Have fun.

Hi,

Before reading this lesson, you might want to review Basic Walking Bass and Simple ii V I Progression Using Chord Tone.

As I already explained before about using chord tone to construct our walking bass lines, today's exercise is similar but no root note is used.

To avoid using the root note is challenging but the bass lines produced is more interesting.

Below is a simple ii V I IV Jazz progression in key of D.








I used the 3rd as the first note of the chord.

E.g. The notes in Em7 are E(root) G(3rd) B(5th) D(7th).

The first note I used for Em7 is G.

You can choose to play the line on a lower register.

Hope this is clear.

Cheers

The first step to sight reading is to know the notes within the staff.

Some music books use phrases like Good Boys Don't Fight (G B D F) and All Cows Eat Grass (A C E G).

For me, I recognize by chords.

G B D F is a G7 chord and A C E G is an Am7 chord.

Whichever works for you, use it.

Start reading something simple before going into complicated rhythms.

Cheers

Chord Substitution is common in our music today.

We can replace a chord with another related chord.

Often the substituted chord differs by one or two notes from the original chord.

Before you read this post, it will be good to take a look at my previous lesson - Introduction to Chords Substitution

For example, we can replace an Am7 chord with a Fmaj7 chord.

The notes in the Am7 chord are: A C E G

In the Fmaj7 chord the notes are: F A C E

There is only one note difference between these two chords.

If we have an Em7 chord, we can replace it with a Cmaj7 chord.

You can also replace the Em7 chord with a Gmaj7 chord.

The notes in the Em7 are: E G B D and G B D F# for Gmaj7.

Again the difference is only in one note. You can call this a relative chord.

Hope this helps.

Recently I bought an effect pedal and realize that the adapter that comes with it supply only 120v but my country uses 220-240v.

To get a transformer to step up could be quite troublesome and bulky.

I found out that we can use an Universal 9 Volt DC Power Supply.

The auto-sensing circuitry runs off 100-240 volts and can use it anywhere in the world.

Take up only one outlet space and makes it easy to travel.

You can check out '1 Spot' by Visual Sound or 'Power All' by Godlyke.

Hope this information is useful.

Hi,

We are going to take a look at using the 5th of the chord tones when we improvise.

This lesson helps us to break away from landing on the root especially during solos.

For example if the chord is a Cmaj7, you can land on the G since it is still within the chord tones.

Now try playing the G Arpeggio.

The notes in the G Arpeggio are G, B and D (end with G octave).

G is the 5th of Cmaj7, B is the 7th of Cmaj7 and D is the 9th of the chord.

Have fun.