I was recently reading an interview with Scott Thunes and he was talking about some of his technique that confused me. Here's the quote:

"I was given jazz lessons at an early age. One of my bass teachers taught me how to listen to Ron Carter playing behind Sonny Rollins, and I later utilized a concept I learned-adding tone chords-in rock. Most of the time when I'm playing weird stuff against normal-sounding stuff, I'm adding a whole other chord. That's similar to polytonal or bitonal classical music, and jazz, because a lot of jazz chords are just one chord superimposed over a solo bass note or another chord. It's the simplest thing in the world. I just gave away $2,000 worth of lessons."

I'm a bit of a theory retard, so is there anyone out there that can break it down barney style and tell me what he's talking about? Thanks in advance.

It is what he says; If my keyboard player plays a D Minor(D F A), I can play another chord over the D, F.ex. a C Major(C E D). If you try it on a Piano, you'l hear that it sounds and nice jazzy.
It won't work out as well on a bass if you try to play all the chord tones simultaneously, so try to play the chord as an arpeggio.
DT

But wait, wouldn't there be some kind of theory rules here? I dunno.....like only playing a chord where the root exists in the other chord? Sorry, I'm a theory retard.

You can play any chord over another, some just don't sounds as nice;) The best way to approach is to play (bi)chords with notes within the main Chord's scale.
F.ex. the C over a D Minor, the C contains only scale notes from the D- chord's scale(which is the D Minor Scale).

See here, we got the D Minor scale, and the bold letters are the notes from a C Major Chord:
D E F G A Bb C D
Get it?:)

Yessir, thanks again.

Too much thinking IMO.

Too much thinking IMO.

Oh, and I supposed your GUITARIST is going to do the thinking in your band? :eyebrow:

Face it, friends'n'neighbors, thinking in the band is OUR job.

I suppose you're right, unless it's jazz. I think everyone get to think there, but then again, I don't know what I'm talking about cuz I've never played in a jazz band.

I guess the technique is good for fattening up boring chords...
Scott was one of the best...