Originally posted by RicPlaya
Thanks for rambling.. why chords first? How would I approach learning these and appreggios?
chords & arpeggios first, because the bass player's primary role (traditionally) is to provide the harmonic & rhythmic foundation for the rest of the band to do their thing...
for each chord your guitarist/pianist/whoever plays, there are 12 notes you could choose at any one time (forget about playing more than one note simultaneously on the bass for the moment!) to play on your bass... the first thing a bass player needs to learn is how to decide which of those notes are appropriate, and which aren't...
as the 'fundamental harmony' provider of the band, your role is overwhelmingly to provide the real obvious notes that outline the chords.. which is always the root, fifth & 3rd
obviously, this isn't ALL a bass player ever needs to do, but it's the meat & potatoes work of bass playing
you could simplify this further and start by ONLY playing root notes, and this will suffice for certain types of music, but since our goal is to be a good musician who happens to play good bass
it's not going to be good enough for very long
I suppose you
could start out from scratch with a modal approach, where you try to marry modes to chords right at the beginning of the 'learning to play bass journey', but A. it gets complex pretty quickly, as much modern music gets its harmonic momentum from 'breaking the rules'.. bringing an often complicated set of questions you dont need to worry about as a learner B. that approach could easily fool you into thinking many notes in the mode have equal value over a chord, when in fact, the 'root-fifth-third' tones will still require the same emphasis as ever
ok.. 3 note chords & arpeggios: (forgive me if this sounds too basic or patronising.. i'm really just trying not to overlook anything...)
the definition for 'arpeggio' is simply 'a broken chord'... instead of playing all notes of a chord together, you're simply playing them one after the other.. so if a chord of 'C major' (just called 'C') is made up of C, E & G, while your guitarist is playing all those notes at once, an arpeggiated bass line might play the following notes in order: C E G E... in fact, play it & you'll recognize it as the kind of thing you'd hear in old rock'n'roll
(note
youll often hear 3 note chords/arpeggios referred to as triads)
the 'C' is the 'root' note, the note that gives its name to the chord... the root is the strongest and usually the most obvious note to play under a chord... but roots alone can also be a bit boring as they give you no other harmonic information
the 'G' is the 'fifth' note, so called because it's the fifth note of the major scale... harmonically, it's very 'transparent' because roots & fifths alone give you no idea whether the chord being accompanied is major or minor
the 'E' is a 'major third' note.. so called because it's the third note of a major scale... the 3rd gives the chord/arpeggio its basic character... if you wanted to play a minor arpeggio, you would play the note 'E flat' (Eb) in place of this 'E natural' (E)... Eb is the 3rd note of a minor scale
the two other types of 3 note chords are where the 5th is either flattened (lowered by a semitone) or sharpened (raised by a semitone)... probably the easiest way to understand these is to compare the notes in the following chords of C:
C major: C, E, G
C minor: C, Eb, G
C diminished: C, Eb, Gb
C augmented: C, E, G#
play the notes & listen to the sound they make and the shapes they make under your fingers... a diminished chord is like a minor chord, but the 5th note is flattened.. and augmented chord is like a major chord, but with the 5th sharpened
the symbol for C diminished is written as C°, and C augmented is written as C+
the last thing I can think to mention is the 'suspended 4th' chord... often written as something like 'Csus' or 'Csus4'.. this is a major chord but with the 3rd sharpened... when you sharpen a major 3rd, you get the same note as the 4th note of a major scale... eg. if you sharpen the 3rd of our C chord, the 3rd, the 'E', becomes an 'F'... so a Csus4 arpeggio is C, F, G
with the above information digested, you should have no problem finding the right notes to play over the majority of chord charts you might get given... at this stage you can forget about extended chords like 7ths, add9's etc.. just work out what the basic triad is & use that
your next stage should be to look at major and minor keys, and what types of chords are usually formed on each scale tone (but the first step is to get the above building blocks woodshedded)
