Most bassists adhere to playing simple bass lines by sticking with the root notes of each chord, which works in most situations but may become repetitive and limit your creativity.
Learning minor chords adds another dynamic to your bass playing. Minor scales feature flattened 3rds in their chord patterns, giving you more options when creating music with these unique sounds.
E Minor
E Minor chords produce a beautiful, haunting sound that is often used to convey longing or sadness in songs like Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters,” Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer,” and many more.
E Minor is a natural minor scale without any sharps or flats; unlike C major which contains two sharps and one flat. To play it, simply count up by half-tones from one note to the first in the next octave until reaching note 1.
To become comfortable playing E minor, try practicing barre chords on your bass. Begin with an open E string, muted A string and move up to 9th fret on D string (B) and 12th fret on G string (E). Strumming these shapes while counting to four takes an effective approach to understanding this key and its patterns.
G Minor
G Minor is a very melancholic key, often used in songs that reflect feelings of concern, anxiety and sadness.
G minor chords possess a distinctive sound, drawing elements from both major and minor scales to create its distinctive sound. Furthermore, this key is popularly chosen for arpeggios due to its strong yet stable sound.
G minor scale features two flats, similar to that of its relative major B major, making its key signature more challenging but creating an interesting tone.
G harmonic minor scale offers you an opportunity to produce some distinctive sounds with its raised seventh note and more chromatic feel, providing an engaging playing experience. G minor is an ideal key for melodies; try transposing popular songs into this key and practicing playing melodies there to develop an ear for how this key conveys emotions and play melodies more expressively in it. Also experiment with adding modal melodies for another dimension to your playing!
C Minor
C Minor is one of the most prevalent chords in music, being easy to play on bass guitar and sounding great with just about every scale and chord progression imaginable.
When beginning to play a C minor chord, always begin on its root note – which is also known as the bottom note of the scale – in order to facilitate faster transitioning between different octaves.
C Minor chord symbols consist of three notes, which are: a1, b3 and 5. It’s the b3 note which distinguishes this chord as minor.
For a clearer understanding of which chords are being played in any key, it can help to consult a complete note interval table. To identify what chords are being played in any key, start by identifying which notes form an interval from third to fifth notes of scale – this is known as major triad chord quality and its name can be given by prefixing root note onto it; so for instance if an interval from third to fifth notes of scale is major (M3) then complete triad chord quality will also be written as M3. Once done for every note in scale!
D Minor
D minor is long been considered the saddest key, and many classical composers used it to convey emotion. Mozart himself famously composed his Requiem in this key, although he died before it could be completed, only amplifying its profound sense of sadness and profound sense of loss.
Modern music artists use D minor sparingly. Only 2 percent of songs in a randomly sampled playlist of classic rock feature this key; most songs use major keys instead.
D Minor chord progressions can be challenging to use effectively for suspenseful music, and can sound dreary and dissonant, turning off listeners. Yet this doesn’t stop it being an excellent choice for ballads and slower-tempo songs – try different chord voicings and inversions to familiarize yourself with its atmosphere; practice writing melodies in D Minor as well!