Addition of an appropriate bass note can enhance a chord progression’s musicality while giving its bass line its own individual style and identity.
Slash chords provide an easy entryway into music theory. Their flexible bass chord shapes allow players to manipulate them up and down the fretboard in order to play different root notes.
Major Scale
A Major scale is composed of seven notes played across an octave. To help visualize them easily and play them more accurately, bass fretboard diagrams (known as tablature) display this scale so you can easily see their placement on a fretboard diagram for bass (known as fretboard tablature). Using this diagram you can visualize and play them easily!
Scales and chord patterns contain different intervals (steps between notes). A key interval in any major-sounding scale is the third; major-sounding scales have a major third while minor ones feature an inverted or flattened third (one note lower).
Learning the major scale provides you with all of the foundations for understanding other scales and chords, and is usually the starting point when learning walking bass. Once you have studied this scale, finding minor pentatonic scales becomes much simpler – simply remove 2nd and 6th notes from what would otherwise be C major natural scale and you have created one!
Minor Scale
One of the key scales to know for bassists is the minor scale, as many songs you hear feature minor chords in their compositions. There are a couple different varieties of minor scales which share many characteristics (with exception to their third note being lower than normal).
The natural minor scale consists of seven notes, similar to a major scale but without sharps or flats. This popular minor scale pairs beautifully with various minor chords.
Use of harmonic minor scale, similar to natural minor but with an altered seventh note, and dorian modal scale are also both highly popular minor scales that go particularly well with minor seventh chords.
Most bassists learn their scales as movable patterns on the fretboard rather than as individual notes. This method helps develop speed and finger dexterity while giving them access to scales they can play over any chord in any song.
Major Triad
Triads have long been used as accompaniment bass lines to enhance and support vocalists while providing an excellent foundation for songs. Learning a major triad is easy and offers limitless possibilities of creating engaging accompaniments; just start from its root note, play its 3rd and 5th, then add its octave root as desired – adding it will not change its structure!
Your major triad can be built using any of the 12 notes found in music, provided that you keep in mind its various interval qualities – diminished, minor, major and augmented – when making adjustments in pitch for bass chords. Each type will require specific modifications; for instance a D major will have to be adjusted upward by three half steps in pitch in order to become an A major triad while one built using scale degree A natural minor will sound similar to an F major chord.
Minor Triad
Triads are an engaging bass chord type that are easy to play on any string and contain the notes of a scale. Triads can be combined together using their basic interval formula (root + major third + perfect fifth).
Triad pairs provide you with two open triads that you can layer one atop of each other and incorporate into your bassline for a fuller sound. For instance, an A minor triad would consist of A (root), C (minor third), and E (perfect fifth). When played together this provides the interval formula 1 b3.
These triads possess the same quality in any key, enabling you to move them up or down on the fretboard while maintaining their sound quality. This technique, known as enharmonic spelling, allows you to alter their feel without changing their shape or position on fretboard. For more information on triads please visit the Triad Pairs Technique page.