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The Major's Bass Boot Camp - Session 36


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  • 3 weeks later...

[quote name='Major-Minor' post='1300724' date='Jul 12 2011, 10:39 AM']Please feel free to ask questions ![/quote]

OK, which one's the easiest? I'd like to have a crack at one over the weekend. I'd also like to echo what everyone else has said, immense thanks for everything you do on here.

Edited by deaver
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[quote name='deaver' post='1338593' date='Aug 13 2011, 11:29 AM']OK, which one's the easiest? I'd like to have a crack at one over the weekend. I'd also like to echo what everyone else has said, immense thanks for everything you do on here.[/quote]
So far, I've only put "Misty" on here as a written part. I'll do the others eventually. "Fly Me To The Moon" has been requested by several of you, and will appear after the holiday period.

None of these is actually easy to play ! Eventually I will start a discussion about how to create your own arrangements (this being the point of this session) and we will look at taking things slowly and building your arrangements to fit your own capabilities.

Have a good summer !!

The Major

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Just wished to add some more thanks for these videos and the offer of transcriptions and advice with our own arrangements. I'm always surprised that more people don't express appreciation, because many teachers don't offer this kind of tuition or assistance, or it can take one ages to work things out on one's own.

Anyway, many thanks, and eagerly following this thread.....

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  • 3 weeks later...

[quote name='Major-Minor' post='1356439' date='Aug 30 2011, 03:54 PM']As promised:

"Fly Me To The Moon"

[attachment=88279:Fly_Me_To_The_Moon.pdf]


The Major[/quote]

That's the gem I've been waiting for! Will give it a look over later in the week. Looking forward to the tutorial that goes with this arrangements list. I've been trying to work on a few recently, Yesterday by the Beatles being one (I thought I'd start nice and simple) I worked out some chords for it and worked out the melody but I'm struggling to marry the two together!

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I've really enjoyed creating these little solo bass guitar arrangements over the last few weeks and now I hope to encourage you to do some yourself. I hope you have had a chance to look at the videos I've recorded so far.

So, have a go and do something similar (ie a bass solo with no backing tracks or drum machines), and if possible video yourself playing and post it on this thread. Then we can discuss what you have done. Clearly, "discuss" implies some sort of criticism, but let's make it "constructive criticism" with a positive attitude rather than negative !! My arrangements are far from perfect (and neither is my playing !) so let's approach this in a "sharing" manner rather than being competitive or critical.

Creating stand alone pieces or arrangements for BG is something I've wanted to get stuck into for ages ! Let's face it, most of us spend our bass careers as rhythm section sidemen or orchestral donkeys, plodding away underneath it all - doing a vital job, of course ! - but we rely on others to fill out the rest of the music.

It's quite liberating to be able to play a solo piece, unencumbered by other players or pre-recorded backing tracks or drum machines. I doubt that you or I would ever be able to make a career out of solo playing, but its fun to do, its good for your technique, it tests your musical knowledge, and is ultimately very satisfying.

So:
I decided to create some solo pieces that incorporate several features:
Well known melodies
Harmony notes, either double stopped or chordal
Sustaining arpeggio accompaniments
"Bass-line" movement
Harmonics when suitable
Contrapuntal (or inner) lines
Tempo variations / Rubato / Rallentando / Pauses etc etc
The maximum amount of expression and musicality that I could squeeze out of the instrument.
Non-reliance on electronic effects

I also decided to push myself, technically, beyond what I would normally expect of myself on this instrument. I needed a new challenge to get myself practising with renewed vigour !
Having spent most of my working life with "the dots" (or sometimes chord charts) in front of me, I also wanted to improve my musical memory.

Now, I wouldn't for one moment expect you to want to copy my style or use my choice of material - I know it's not to everybody's taste - but I thought it might be helpful to you if I go through some of my thought processes and the technical issues that I've come up against.

Choice of Material

My personal preference is for music with an interesting harmonic flow. Static (or limited) harmony is useful in some parts of a piece, but to make things work well as a solo on our instrument we need good and regular chord changes to add interest to the music.

So I've been drawn time and time again to vocal standards from the "Great American Songbook" - tunes that I've known all my life, and feel entirely comfortable with. Many of these tunes have good chord sequences to use as a starting point.
I think it's very important to feel an affinity with the core material before setting off creating your arrangement.

When I'm looking for a new melody to work on I usually pick out a handful of tunes that take my fancy (I've got loads of "Fake" books) and work through them just playing the first bar or two of melody, attempting to find suitable accompanying notes or arpeggios. Some tunes lend themselves to this treatment more than others and of course I tend to go for the easiest ! If a tune is too busy or the chords are too complex, then I usually discard this one and move on to the next. No doubt I'll go back to some of the more complex ones in the future.

The Key

It's important to find the right key for the piece you are working on. I check the overall pitch range of the tune to make sure it fits on my 24 fret 5 string Yamaha (by the way, all the pieces I've done so far are playable on a 4 string bass, but most of them require more than the 21 frets as on a Fender Jazz).
So far, I have not had to transpose any of the tunes I have worked on. The "standard" keys of these Golden Oldies, as seen in Fake Books, are (mostly) in the average male vocal range and, as the upper octave of my bass is also in that same range, I've been able to work straight off the page. (Most "standards" are published in the male vocal key).

Right-Hand Articulation

I did a bit of fingerstyle classical guitar playing in my youth, and I've found this technique has come back to me very quickly doing these solos.
Instead of the usual way of playing, each finger coming to rest on the next string down after articulation, now I am plucking up into the palm. As I now want 2 or 3 strings, sometimes even 4 strings, ringing on simultaneously to create chordal or intervallic playing, I need to adopt this fingerstyle technique.

Muting

Now that my right hand fingers are no longer resting on the strings, I need to ensure that harmonics and open strings are not hanging on in the wrong places.
However there are occasions when I need these notes to sustain to create a particular harmony and then the challenge is to not accidentally touch the string, causing the note to stop.

Tuning and Instrument Set Up

Accurate tuning is of course vital for all playing, but when you are solo, it becomes very obvious if you have not taken time to get it absolutely perfect. Electronic tuners are very helpful (I use the clip-on variety) but you must still let your ear have the final say.
Setting up the bass correctly, string length-wise, will ensure that 3 and 4 note chords sound in tune. The Major triad is the best test. Other chords, like say Minor 7ths, will not show bad intonation quite so clearly.
Having tuned the open strings, play the chord of C Major:
C 4th finger A string 15th fret
E 3rd finger D string 14th fret
G 1st finger G string 12th fret
This chord needs to sound sweetly in tune. If it is not, then you need to spend a bit of time with a screwdriver on your bridge adjusters.

Now, I have to admit that, although my strings were in tune when I recorded some of these videos, I had not taken the time to get the set-up just right, and to be honest, it shows in one or two places ! I have spent some time and now rectified this !!

The Arranging Process

For me, this is the hardest bit, but also the most enjoyable ! It can be very intense and at times seems like slow progress, but when the notes eventually fall into place, it is very satisfying.
Even when I have a broad outline of the piece, I go over and over it many times making small adjustments till I feel I can improve it no more.
I usually work at each piece over several days, maybe an hour a day. Coming back to it fresh each day always helps me to find new ideas. In the first 30 minutes of day 1, I usually have the broad outline finished but at this stage I can't play it without stuttering. And there are often bits that I think I'll never be able to get round ! Over the next few practise sessions, it all comes together.

So what do I actually do ?
Well, I'm glad that nobody can actually hear me going through this process !
There is a lot of experimentation and "trial and error".
I work through the melody putting in harmony notes, or root notes, trying to find things that make sense of the harmonic direction. Sometimes I find I need to make alterations to the given chords. I like playing around with substitutions, sometimes quite radically altering the chords, but I aim to produce something that still makes good musical sense, with a feeling of forward momentum.
My main aim is to have more than 1 note sustaining at any time, quite the opposite to our usual bass player's role, but this has to be done with care, as it can sound very muddy if the notes are clustered at too low a pitch. The interval of a 10th will always work pretty well. but 3rds too low down will just be too thick for comfort.
Of course it depends on musical context, and you may well want that sort of sound in your piece, but for my taste and style I like to aim for clarity.

So, when I play an arpeggiated section, I am aiming to get each of the notes to "hang" so that the chord is clearly defined. This isn't always possible of course, and I might end up with just 2 notes sounding together at any one moment.

An important point is this:
You don't necessarily have to use all the notes of the given chord to make sense of the harmonic movement.
If, say the melody note is G, and the chord is C7, you may get away with just the Bb (the 7th) underneath or maybe add the E (the 3rd) as well. It all depends where the chord is moving to. If the next melody note is, say, an F, with an F major triad, then you can just play the A (the 3rd) underneath, so you get that nice movement of the Bb to the A underneath the melody. And you can offset these accompanying notes so they fall in the cracks (rhythmically speaking) between the melody notes.

Where you have a long melody note, say for a whole bar of 4 beats (in 4/4) then you have the chance to fill out the accompaniment. You can be creative here, deviating from the original sequence, tastefully of course !
You don't have to hold that melody note for the whole bar, you can maybe repeat it with other notes underneath (or on top). The possibilities are endless - use your musical imagination.

After a while, the arrangement takes on a character of it's own, sometimes quite different to the way we are used to hearing the melody.

Every bass player will come up with a different take on a given tune. For instance have a listen to my good friend Berthold Basten's version of Moon River:



Now revisit my version:



How different they seem ! I think you can hear the "Classical" influence in my approach whereas Berthold's version seems to float beautifully with lots of sophisticated harmonies. And I love his use of counterpoint in the 2nd half of the tune. Check out Berthold's other work. There's some great stuff there.


So get cracking ! I hope to see the results of your efforts on here sometime soon. In the meantime, I'm just going to keep adding more of my own, so if you want to shut me up, get some stuff on here quick !

The Major

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Hey, just wanted to say i'm really enjoying your stuff!

I've been looking into solo arrangements for bass lately... I've been listening to a lot of Ted Greene and Bill Frisell for inspiration.

Anyhow, here's a little improvised arrangement of Autumn Leaves I recorded (apologies for the mic distortion... all my gear was breaking down at once lol)...



Easy,

Scott.

[url="http://www.scottsbasslessons.com"]http://www.scottsbasslessons.com[/url]
[url="http://www.scottdevinemusic.com"]http://www.scottdevinemusic.com[/url]

Edited by devinebass
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