Learn Country Guitar - Three Tips to Create Professional Bass Parts
By Media Corp LLC | October 19, 2008
By Mike P Hayes
Traditional country songs all feature strong bass parts, in fact many tunes were recorded with two bass parts, a string bass (upright bass) that duplicated and reinforced the electric bass.
Sometimes the electric bass was played with a pick to give more definition. Playing with a pick created a brighter sound which produced an audible ‘click’ a split second before the actual note.
On the other hand, some country record producers preferred the electric bass player to use a felt pick. Felt picks are usually used for playing ukuleles, however when used on an electric bass can produce a sound similar to that of an upright bass.
Often a guitar player finds himself or herself in a situation where there isn’t a backing band to help them present their material, that’s when it’s handy to be able to create your own bass part on the guitar.
Here’s three tips to help you create great sounding bass parts on your guitar.
1. Tonic note on first beat
The most important thing to remember when creating a bass part is to play the tonic note on the first beat. This is an very basic idea, but one that must not be overlooked.
The tonic note is the same name as the chord e.g., if you were playing a ‘D’ chord the tonic note would be ‘D’.
Here is how you would apply this principle, let’s say you have a rhythm guitar part that consisted of the following 8 bars:
D/// | D/// | G/// |G/// |A7/// | A7/// | D/// |D/// ||
Simply replace the first strum in each bar with a bass note the same name as the chord, in the instance of A7, use the note ‘A’.
Regardless of the chord type e.g., whether it is a major, minor or seventh chord etc., you still play the tonic note i.e., a bass note the same letter name as the chord itself.
2. Learn to create alternating bass parts
The next step is to create an alternating bass part, this is done by playing the tonic note on beat one of the bar then playing the fifth of the chord on the third beat.
Again, using ‘D’ chord as an example: the tonic would be ‘D’ and the fifth note (the alternating note) would be ‘A’.
D, E, F#, G, A
1, 2, 3 , 4, 5
Notice how I had to make the third note F# because the key of D contains two sharps F# and C#.
Using this concept you can easily create professional bass parts for any major, minor or dominant seventh chord.
Here’s another example this time using A7: the tonic would be ‘A’ and the fifth note (the alternating note) would be ‘E’.
A, B, C#, D, E
1, 2, 3 , 4, 5
3. Bass patterns in 3/4 time
Country songs in 3/4 time require special treatment, there’s two ways to can approach this challenge.
(a) use exclusively the ‘tonic only’ on the first beat bass part approach.
(b) when there are two bars of the same chord use alternating bass and when there is only one bar of a chord use ‘tonic’ on the first beat.
Even if you do play with a bass player the octave difference between the pitch of the notes on a guitar and bass guitar will make certain your bass parts won’t get in the way of the bass player, in fact it will sound great especially if you palm mute your bass part on the guitar.
Topics: Guitar, Media Corp LLC |
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