i went to my lesson today and my teacher handed me some new music. i suck at sight reading so i fallowed the chord chart and made up a root, fifth rhythm on the fly and i my teacher said "i like that root, fifth thing you are doing" i feel like i am one step closer to being a real bass player
Good man...just two notes can sound great, especially when you add some ghost notes in there. Its all in the rythm!!!
lol, thats what I started doing when I was a bass player. Simple root 5th stuff. Then some triads. then descending/asending runs. then some 7th licks.
It's amazing what one well placed ghost note can do to the pulse of a rhythm section. It's a cool thing to work with, especially if you're working around simple two-three note riffs.
What else would you do for basic latin grooves? Root, Fifth, Octaves, those are like the meat of that style.
A simple root-fifth-octave vibe with the right rhythm can be a very effective line. I loves me some claves. One of my favorite latin sounding lines is just i-iii-iv in the root i-iii-iv in the fourth and then a scalar descent from the vi of the root,( which, if I'm remembering right is the iii in the fourth.) set against a 3-2 clave. Whoa, wow, woe...That sounds SO much more confusing in print than the actual line is to play. I suck at tabbing but maybe I should try that to express it. It's a really simple line, and darned useful. G--------------------------------------------- D-------------4---7------------4-------------- A----4---7--5----------4---7-7-7-5-4--------- E--5-----------------5----------------7-5----- Okay, those are the notes. And the rhythm fits against a 3-2 clave. Here, listen closely and I'll clap it really loudly. Lean in close to your monitors. Like that. Okay?
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=125536 This is a nice, easy to apply way to take that foot fifth thing up a notch - BAM!