Im having trouble making my own music, fills, and all that on a bass. I know all about scales and arpeggios, but i still dont understand how to make my own little licks on the bass. 
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Incorporating Scales!!!
- Thread starter HalfPlayer
- Start date
Im having trouble making my own music, fills, and all that on a bass. I know all about scales and arpeggios, but i still dont understand how to make my own little licks on the bass.
Three note chromatic walk ups or walk downs and of course the chord tone in little four note phrases - R-3-5-3 or 3-5-3-8 stuff like that is about all the fills I end up doing. I play Country and Praise.
Country is root-five and chromatic walks to the next chord. Chromatic runs is about all Country will allow, before you start getting fish eyes from the guys. We play ole time Country in my neck of the woods.
Praise will use as many as all seven chords in one song, so the chords come quickly, and root to the beat and hitting the chord change dead on is my normal plan. Three chord chromatic walks to end a phrase or add interest is about all I've ventured into. I let the drummer carry the beat and I call attention to the chord changes. That's about all the time (room) that is allowed in the Praise music we play.
I guess my point is, fills are not a big part of what I do - they just happen as needed and with my Country background that fill is probably going to be a chromatic walk up or down. Ed Friedland's books on walking bass lines may have some of what you are looking for. See a Cmaj7 chord and know what "lick" or bass line is going to work. Now how much of a fill the music will allow is the rest of that story.
Im having trouble making my own music, fills, and all that on a bass. I know all about scales and arpeggios, but i still dont understand how to make my own little licks on the bass.
Then you really don't know all about scales and arpeggios. That's the blunt truth. To KNOW them you have to:
A. Be able to construct them in any key WITHOUT REFERENCE to your instrument. That includes knowing the correct names for every note (i.e. you know that the key of A has a C# in it, and you know why it's not called Db)
B. Be able to find the notes of it all over the neck, without being constrained to starting on the root all the time.
C. You know the harmonized scale to the 7th- Not good enough to know that the I and IV are major 7, the ii, iii, and vi are minor7, the V is dominant 7, and the vii is a minor 7 b5. You need to understand WHY.
D. Most important of all- you know what the next note of the scale and arpeggio is going to sound like BEFORE you play it.
And also study bass lines in recordings. Work out the scales/arpeggios used. Jack Bruce's line on "Badge" gets right to an Amin arpeggio. Do you hear that? THAT'S how you learn to use scales and arpeggios. As Charlie Parker said- "You gotta learn all your scales and chords and inversions. Then you forget that stuff and play."
He was saying that the rudiments are the building blocks of the language, but they ain't the language. Knowing how to pronounce a bunch of words and what they mean isn't what learning a foreign language is about. It's learning the different syntax and thought processes that are characteristic of that language. Same with music.
John
John
Great stuff John. I am also one of those guys trying to move things to the next level. It is easy to just learn basslines and play them and be able to get by. I have done it since I began playing. I never took the time to do the ground work and in the long run it has stiffled my playing.
