| Chord Melody Thanks for the interest!
The technique is called chord-melody, it consists in playing the melody along with the bass line and sometimes another melody line or "voice" in between those two.
It is not difficult at all in theory - chord melody playing is really easy to do for a piano player - but for us bass players we have to learn how to visualize the bass guitar and see it and incorporate it just like a piano player would do it.
We can do this by learning all the note names in the whole fretboard, by knowing many different positions of a single scale, it is important to know how harmony works in counterpoint.
Rather than tabs I encourage you to transcribe by ear, keep in mind that my bass is tuned with a 'high C' string. ( E, A, D, G, C)
If you want to get into this technique I suggest that you take a simple song that you really like, play the bass notes singing the melody. Then figure out how to play the melody, after that spend some time figuring out how to play those 2 lines together: bass and melody.
After that you can add a third melody line in the middle, that voice is the "subliminal" one; the listener will not be totally aware about it so you can play some more obscure lines, with chromaticisms or other counterpoint elements to create balance between the gravity of these melodies.
I hope this helps!
All the best,
Andres |