Hey, I like your vision. You must have a lot of experience!
Here is my amateur bass player’s (who doesn’t solo) thoughts about that Amin7 chord.
It’s not enough information about it .
Is it just one measure or two, or more?
What are other chords, a/any chord progression, or it’s some modal music?
Anyway, my intro phrase would start at the second swing 8th note on Beat 1 as
B D F# E G Eb D (let’s say, all swing eights) and so on.
But it’s just me, a beginner musician
I want to make sure I was clear in answering your original question. You asked, “A comping bass line IS the same as soloing?”
(Edit: This turned out to be a long reply. But I believe I answered your question with a few examples that you can check for yourself).
For the sake of clarity let’s leave style, rhythm and phrasing out of the conversation for now. My comments are in regards to function. In tonal music, once you understand function you understand everything.
I’d be glad to answer any questions. Perhaps it would be best if you or I picked a tune, performed some analysis and revealed function.
Theory wise, I come from the school of Heinrich Schenker, Arnold Schoenberg, Dan Haerle and my old UNT professor, Dr Kevin Korsyn. Jeff Berlin was my main jazz/fusion influence as far as applying music theory to the bass.
Check out Dan Haerle’s The Jazz Language, Arnold Schoenberg’s Structual Functions of Harmony, Fux’s The Study of Counterpoint, Harmony and Voice Leading by Aldwell and Schachter, Counterpoint in Composition by Salzer and Schachter and maybe look at Tom Pankhusrt’s Guide to Schenkerian Analysis website. His website is a good as any text written on the subject and he avoids the indecipherable and unnecessary “academic speak” that plagues so many texts.
What they all have in common is how they emphasize function.
I do a lot of analysis (mostly for my students these days or for upcoming conducting gigs).
I’m planning a new series of videos on my YouTube channel. The goal is to perform function and reduction type analysis to about 100 Bach Chorales and 100 Real Book tunes. Maybe that’s something you might be interested in. My analysis technique is not your typical roman numeral anayisis. What I do is based primarily on species counterpoint, and functional harmony. I think a lot of high school and freshman college music theory teachers teach the subject completely wrong. Unfortunately many theory teachers are failed composers. Music theory, IMO is the process of reverse engineering compositions. If you’re a failed composer, you have no business teaching music theory. (By “failed” I don’t mean they failed at being a careered composer, I mean many theory teachers can’t and don’t compose. Things have changed for the better over the past 10 - 15 years as a lot of energetic “Schenkerians” have replaced the previous generation.
Example: Freshman Music Theory is generally a lot of “part writing” rules for vertical chord to chord Bach style composing. Did Bach use part writing rules to harmonize his Chorales?
No. He didn’t.
This is how Bach wrote Chorales. He was given a melody and his job was to write the bass, tenor and alto parts that were sung by the boys/men’s choir.
It’s important to realize that Bach already had the soprano voice, and that he used the principles of Species Counterpoint to write a bass voice and then the tenor and alto voices. He worked horizontally, not vertically.
Why am I telling you this? What does this have to do with jazz soloing for bassists?
Bach’s bass voice was as important and melodic as the soprano voice. They were nearly identical (with some functional exceptions). This still applies today for jazz bass players. A walking bass line is fundamentally the same as a Sax player’s solo (with some functional exceptions).
What this means for the OP is that if he understands how to walk a swing bass line, then he already has the knowledge to solo. He just needs to turn quarter notes into eighth notes. Those extra four notes are found in the scale and arpeggios of the tonality (including all the substituting and borrowing one can think of).
I only mentioned a single ii V I and in a later post, a single chord because about 50-60% of what one needs to know to understand how to solo is contained in that single cadence. Everything after that is just substitution and borrowing which is fairly easy. Even difficult tonal harmony has a logical thread back to the simple cadence.
Phrasing is just singing.
Rhythm is mostly intuitive.
Counterpoint and harmonic function is where the student and pro alike should focus a good deal of their studies.
Regards,
Steve Steele
No doubt, it'll put a few noses out of joint, so, if you're easily offended, don't read it. — Invalid Link Removed
