tooooooooooooooo good..ok....how'bout Roberta Flack's Reverend Lee...I mean if you want to bring out the top shelf stuff...haha..too good!
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
The 3rd in basslines
- Thread starter Cougar
- Start date
tooooooooooooooo good..ok....how'bout Roberta Flack's Reverend Lee...I mean if you want to bring out the top shelf stuff...haha..too good!
poppycock! If you avoid the 3rd you're only playing root fifth and octaves, very BORING indeed.
If you want to play nice melodic basslines ala Sir Paul, learn which third is in the chord your bandmates are playing, and USE IT !
If you want to play nice melodic basslines ala Sir Paul, learn which third is in the chord your bandmates are playing, and USE IT !
A 10th is an interval, not a note. In the context we are discussing, it's played as a double stop.
The Bb is the minor 3rd of the G if the chord is Gm, and it's the #9 if it's a G7.
and you are a bass player?
study his lines, he plays the third, all the time. Sheesh,does every statement made on TB have to be argued over?
Off to a more sensible place.
I was just diggin' & could not locate the source (a book, a magazine, etc).
I do recall reading Chuck Rainey describing Jamerson's Motown sound (I had this excerpt posted in the Motown 101 thread)...
>IIRC, Chuck Rainey (a contemporary of Jamerson...and a fan) mentions that Jamerson's style employs a Root-Five-Octave approach with a baion rhythm.
So, this quasi-Brasilian/Latin rhythm played against/with the backbeat of Benny Benjamin/Uriel Jones...made for a different "sound".<
I like 10ths for their big sound. Play the C on your E string and the E on your G string at the same time. That's a major 10th, which sounds great to me. Now play the same C at the same time as the E on the A string. That is a 3rd, which sounds muddy and indistinct. 10ths sound different from 3rds and work better in the bass range as they are not so muddy sounding.
I suppose if you add another octave to the interval it could be called a 17th, although I've never heard it called that. At that point I would just call it playing the 3rd up a couple of octaves.
Last edited:
sorry,i don't understand any of your points. I have no interest in reading any more of your posts.
Good. Use your ears, and come to your own conclusions about how anything/everything sounds.
But just know that there are traditions and good practices that other musicians have employed over the years for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons for not violating the Low Interval Limits is that historically this will ensure that your voicings are clear and will be heard distinctly by all listeners...and many (most?) professional arrangers and composers are interested in having their harmonies sound clear and distinct.
I wanted to incorporate the open E string - the lowest pitch on my 4-string bass; therefore,
I used C#m7 chord.
Once again, it's up to our educated bass players to decide if that open E is a 3rd, or something else.
Um...that seems a bit like a non-sequitur, but what the heck, it's a slow night at the studio so I'll play:
Educated or not, the "decision" whether some note "is" a 3rd can be made or not made; it's not mandatory to identify musical structures in order to enjoy them. However, sometimes identifying musical structures can enhance the enjoyment of music. It can be argued that the converse is also true. But, presuming that the "decision" whether some note "is" a 3rd is going to be made, it will be made for a reason: Either one of function (i.e., this note fulfills an expectation set up by the harmonic progression), or one of audiation (i.e., if it sounds like a 3rd it is a 3rd). No one should be calling something a 3rd if there's no reason to. Which doesn't mean some folks won't still try. It's entirely possible to have a musical situation where an E against a C#m chord would neither function nor sound like a 3rd...but A) that situation would be rare, and would almost certainly involve non-traditional instrumentation (otherwise it would be very difficult to not hear the E as the 3rd), and B) some folks, educated or not, would still insist it was a 3rd, simply because they bring the a priori knowledge that "E is the 3rd degree of the C# minor scale" to the table and don't recognize that sans functionality or audiation, that observation is purely trivia -- or baggage -- rather than actual information.
Was that the response you were looking for?
Yes.
In this thread, there were a few comments with the clearly stated notion that there is a BIG difference between a 3rd and a 10th in sound; therefore, I wanted to know if the open E note in my example could be noted as -b3rd (one octave lower.)
Ah, I see. Well, it depends what you mean by "noted".
It also depends on whether you're speaking in absolutes, or more generally.
