Guide tones

Two Feel Bass Line and Right-Hand Harmony

The two feel bass line you just played is one of the most basic and important ways of accompanying a melody in the left hand.

• Accompanying Others: Even if you don't play the melody, you can accompany someone else. You're basically imitating a bass player.

Practice Generating a Bass Line

• Practice this way of generating a bass line with other tunes from your fake book.
• Alternatively, use any tune that you already know.
• Just think about the chords and generate a bass line using this method.

Adding Chords in the Right Hand

Now we're going to add some chords in the right hand to flesh it out a little bit, creating a two-handed accompaniment against the same two feel bass.

Simple Right Hand Harmony

The simplest way of adding some right hand harmony is to just play two notes. The most obvious notes to choose are the third and seventh of the chord, often called guide tones.

Here's a quick guide through basic guide tones for a few different chord types:

• C Major:

  • Play E and B
  • You can also play them inverted: B and E.

• C6:

  • Play E and A
  • For sixth chords, the sixth replaces the seventh: A and E.

• E7 (Dominant Chord):

  • The third and seventh are your go-to choice of notes.
  • For E7, that would be G sharp and D.
  • You can also flip it to D and E sharp, or D and G sharp.

• Minor Chord (F Minor):

  • The third and seventh will be A flat and E flat.
  • You can flip it over for a perfect fifth and perfect fourth.

• Minor Sixth Chord:

  • You'll be playing the minor third and the sixth, which are also tritones: A flat to D.

Using Tritones in Context

So far, we've used a tritone in a dominant seventh context. Now you know that you can also use it for a minor sixth chord.

Example: II V Progression

Before we try this over the chords of "All of Me," let me point out:

• When you have a II V progression from D minor to G7, you only need to move one note.

  • If you're playing F and C for D minor, simply move the C to A, B.
  • That's all you need to do. Job done.

• For the other position (D minor), if you have C and F, move the C to A, B.

  • The seventh falls to the third.

This approach is very economical!