Building bass lines, point A to point B, brief theory of root motion, 8 approach options

Building Bass Lines

Okay, now we're going to talk about building bass lines, and then we can put that with the rhythm.

Key Concepts

• Building bass lines is really about getting from point A to point B.

Chord Changes

• In the first example, you've got:

  • Four beats per change for each chord change.

• In example two:

  • I purposely made the chords only two beats each to show different ways to connect them.

• In the third example:

  • The first chord is eight beats, the second one is four, and the third one is four.

• Example four has:

  • Eight beats each for the chords.

• Example five consists of:

  • Two beats each for the chords.

Differences in Examples

• The difference between example five and the others is that:

  • Example five, as you can see, has the chords moving by step:
    • D, E, F, and then back to E again.

• In contrast, for F7 in example four:

  • It moves from B flat 7, either down a fifth or up a fourth.

• In example three:

  • G moving to C is either down a fifth or up a fourth.

• D is a step from C, but a fifth from G.

  • Bringing it back here, we have:
    • C to F
    • Then we have down a third: D to G.

• Each of these sets of changes are either a fifth or a fourth apart.

Cycle Five Motion

• We'll talk a little bit about that; this is called cycle five motion, the most common kind of bass motion we see.

Approaches to Creating Bass Lines

As we look at each of the examples we just reviewed (examples 1 through 5 of the chord progressions), we're going to show each progression using these different approaches to creating the bass lines:

1. Root, fifth, and octave.
2. Scale down.
3. Scale up.
4. Triad.
5. Inversions.
6. Sequences.
7. Combination of any or all of the techniques discussed.