Inside looking out scale

[bottomend!]

try to think of the notes not as a scale but as Damian pointed out, "passing notes". In order to do that you need to form an aural perspective of what notes you're passing INTO. Since the example you're posting about is in the key of G, lets look at it this way;

The G is obviously your "home" note. Thats where this run of notes lives. There are other notes in this bass run that are going to be semi-related to this home/house. But they will be "outside" and away from the home note.

The next important note in the run is the C note. You can think of this as your best friends house. You know where he lives and you know what the house looks like and you may even know where he hides the porn stash in his bedroom... but it's still not YOUR house.

The next note is the D. This is like your grandmothers house. Sometimes you stay over night and she cooks for you and it feels ALMOST like home but not quite. Shes family, but one step removed.

The last note is the F. This is like your friends cousins place. You've been there a few times and he's cool but a little annoying.

I'm trying to get you to think of the DISTANCE of these notes in RELATION to your home note. Play the G ( home) then play the C, and try to hear/feel the emotional gap/divide/distance between the two. It's a feeling thing more than anything else. Do the same with the D and the F in relation to the G.

Now for the fun part; Play the note DIRECTLY BELOW those 4 notes and listen/feel the PULL they create. You'll start to hear how the note below the C (which is B) will want to pull up into the C.

Our next target note is the D and a half step below that is the C#. Feel the pull on that one. It'll be pretty strong.

Next is The E leading into our F target, and finally the F# goin g back to our home note G.

One way to think of these "passing notes" could be to picture them as the front steps leading up and into our target note houses. You walk up the steps and only then, can you enter the house.

The bass run you picked out was a good one to work on/listen to in order to begin discovering the relationships that notes have on each other. Some notes push, and some notes pull. All the "passing notes" here exert a very strong pulling tendency up into the target notes.

[bigbass94]

Originally Posted by bottomend!

try to think of the notes not as a scale but as Damian pointed out, "passing notes". In order to do that you need to form an aural perspective of what notes you're passing INTO. Since the example you're posting about is in the key of G, lets look at it this way;

The G is obviously your "home" note. Thats where this run of notes lives. There are other notes in this bass run that are going to be semi-related to this home/house. But they will be "outside" and away from the home note.

The next important note in the run is the C note. You can think of this as your best friends house. You know where he lives and you know what the house looks like and you may even know where he hides the porn stash in his bedroom... but it's still not YOUR house.

The next note is the D. This is like your grandmothers house. Sometimes you stay over night and she cooks for you and it feels ALMOST like home but not quite. Shes family, but one step removed.

The last note is the F. This is like your friends cousins place. You've been there a few times and he's cool but a little annoying.

I'm trying to get you to think of the DISTANCE of these notes in RELATION to your home note. Play the G ( home) then play the C, and try to hear/feel the emotional gap/divide/distance between the two. It's a feeling thing more than anything else. Do the same with the D and the F in relation to the G.

Now for the fun part; Play the note DIRECTLY BELOW those 4 notes and listen/feel the PULL they create. You'll start to hear how the note below the C (which is B) will want to pull up into the C.

Our next target note is the D and a half step below that is the C#. Feel the pull on that one. It'll be pretty strong.

Next is The E leading into our F target, and finally the F# goin g back to our home note G.

One way to think of these "passing notes" could be to picture them as the front steps leading up and into our target note houses. You walk up the steps and only then, can you enter the house.

The bass run you picked out was a good one to work on/listen to in order to begin discovering the relationships that notes have on each other. Some notes push, and some notes pull. All the "passing notes" here exert a very strong pulling tendency up into the target notes.

+1,00000

[bottomend!]

Cool. So you got what I was trying to say, right?

Play each one of the "leading up to" notes slowly... or actually you can STOP on them and your ear will "pull" you up to the next note automatically after a second or two. This is the sort of thing that bridges what is mostly thought of as an aural musical experience with a more physical one. This pull/push phenomenon is also what gives music tension or release within certain sections of songs ( trasitions from the verse to the chours for example). By breaking this little bass line down we can see that it incoorporates a ton of very fundamental concepts.