~ Master Stand-alone Lessons Collection ~
The current page contains only the stand-alone video lessons and does not include any videos that are exclusive to the Modules.
The button below includes all lesson videos & locations for every video here at BassEducation
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Arpeggios & Inversions
Here, we start exploring arpeggios & inversions in our practice through chord changes.
Incorporating extensions into our arpeggios and inversions (9 11 13)
Other lessons referenced in this video:
‘Building Chord Scales’ in the Other Useful Scales section of this page.
Exploring chord tones out of time through a set of chord changes is a fantastic way to give ourselves time to practice thinking through and recognizing chord tones without the pressure of a metronome or play-along. I’m a huge fan of using a set of chord changes as a vehicle to explore harmony on my fretboard freely and at my own pace.
This is another nice way to start introducing extensions into our patterns in an intentional way.
Continuing on to include every note of the scale over two octaves giving us our full chord scale in 3rds!
Bass Line Construction
What are approach notes and enclosures?
I break them down here and talk about how to explore them on your own.
Taking things a bit further by focusing on outlining chord tones and creating ostinatos (repeating patterns that help you sound more compositional in your approach)
Using dynamics to really bring it all together and make it sing.
Here is a primer on my approach to walking bass lines.
Check out the Walking Module to go much deeper and at a more relaxed pace
Transcribing ‘116th St.’ in real time and showing you what my process looks like and how I perceive things and work them out.
A student asked about this tune so I transcribed a chunk of it and broke it down here. What a great track!
General
Good Practice
Re-harm doesn’t need to be scary.
1) pick a simple melody
2) play around with different roots underneath the melody
3) experiment with different chord qualities
4) rinse & repeat (you’ll get better at it over time!)
Improvisation
Combating the ‘blank canvas’ reaction to soloing. Here’s how I think with regard to starting your solo, giving yourself something to work from, using space to create phrases and pacing yourself so you have somewhere to go.
Without space we don’t have phrases and creating phrases are what a good solo is all about. This is a big part of ‘telling a story’ when you improvise.
Breaking down a groove solo of mine that got some love on social media. Here’s what I’m playing and what’s going through my head.
Often, our fingers get in the way of making music. We start playing the same patterns and just can’t seem to get away from that. Here’s how I use vocalization as a way to tap into the music that I want to hear.
Choosing just a few scale tones to play through changes is a wonderful way to force ourselves to do more with less as well as a stellar way to challenge ourselves to find those notes on demand.
Admittedly, this lick is a little daunting at first but a student heard me play it and asked me to break it down and I thought you might dig this. It’s also a great insight into the way I think about things (using both shapes and intervallic awareness as I play).
A phenomenal way to teach yourself to see the connecting threads through changes. This kind of exercise really helped me to play through changes and not just at them.
This is a great primer video for the voice-leading lesson as well.
Voice leading is basically the term for moving linearly through chord changes. Seeing how the note you’re currently playing relates to the next chord and moving by only whole or half steps to reflect an appropriate note for the next chord. This is how improvisors thread a line through changes without jumping around every time a chord changes. No matter where we are, we are either on or very near a great note choice for the next chord.
>>Additional Guide Tone examples<<
(provided by Daniel McGillicuddy in his Bass Accumulations space within the community)
How I explore using various scales and approaches for any chord type. I’ll walk you through my thought process on how I might get away from playing the most basic version of a scale and wind up at (sometimes seemingly disparate) scale choices for a chord type.
For many of us, the hardest part of any solo is how to start and how to end. Here is how I try and think about things when I get ‘the nod’ from someone on stage.
Some fairly quick and easy ways to explore playing over chords from places other than the root and implying different types of harmony (without hurting your brain).
Taking things a step further and beginning to break out of our major scale harmony.
Major Scale & Related Modes
What intervals are, how the naming conventions work and why they are so useful to think about.
Many of us get locked into only thinking from the root up through scales and arpeggios but learning to see other scale tones from either side of your root is paramount to fretboard freedom.
I encourage you to make your own diagrams like this in order help you practice visualizing your fretboard
Why are scales important? There are some useful and not-so-useful ways to approach scales. Here is my perspective.
Mapping out the major scale all over your fretboard. There are so many ways to approach this one scale and building a strong foundation with the major scale makes everything easier.
Ways to expand upon the way we perceive and explore our major scale using broken intervals and double-stops.
>>Hal Galper Scalar Exercises<< (courtesy of Daniel McGillicuddy)
I like to always practice making music when I practice, even when internalizing patterns and mechanical devices. Here are my thoughts on how to use music making as a way to have fun exploring your scales and expanding upon them to create melodies and grooves..
Creating little grooves is a great way to explore making music with your scales. Here is how I further internalize scalar relationships using simple chord shapes and rhythm to make music while I practice.
Mindset
This was intended to just be an impromptu post in the community but it seemed like it might be useful (and might as well live here as well before getting buried in the feed over there).
Forgive the spontaneous iPhone video vibe.
Other Useful Scales
Exploring the major and minor relationships within our pentatonic scale.
>>PENTATONIC WORKOUT<< (courtesy of Daniel McGillicuddy)
What are chord scales?
…and why I think they are the best way to think about harmony when playing through chord changes.
How we can apply chord scales and incorporate them into our practice.
1 scale… 8 chords!
What are octatonic scales and why do jazz musicians love them so much? An incredibly useful scale for playing over both altered dominant chords as well as diminished chords.
Play-Throughs
I play through the standard ‘Beatrice’ and then walk you through what I’m thinking and playing, step by step.
Transcriptions:
I walk and solo through the form on Beautiful Love and then give a little breakdown of what I’m thinking as I play.
Download:
Beautiful Love Melody Analysis
(courtesy of Daniel McGillicuddy)
(courtesy of Daniel McGillicuddy)
Lessons referenced:
I play through the standard ‘Stella By Starlight’ and then walk you through what I’m thinking and playing, step by step.
Download
taken from the Erskine Essentials Play Alongs
(courtesy of Daniel McGillicuddy)
Reading
40min clinic on the basics (& a bit beyond) of reading notation.
Download:
“Reading Music: Common Notation”
By Catherine Schmidt-Jones
Rhythm
A unique, challenging and rhythmic palette broadening exercise that will get you thinking completely differently about some new ways to explore rhythm in your practice.
A challenging way to take the rhythms that you already know and string them together to create new exercises.
Using muted notes, articulations and rhythm alongside some already comfortable harmonic patterns to really broaden our articulations and rhythm comfort zones.
40min of rhythm. This is an entire masterclass on how to apply the ways in which drummers work on rhythm to really feel those subdivisions. Rhythm and feel is everything when playing bass and this gets to the heart of it all.
Technique
Your articulations are everything when it comes to taking a regular old bass line and really making it do something (without just adding notes or rhythms)
We have so much control over our tone just by virtue of how and where we pluck the strings. Learn to do more with your sound before you even think about turning a knob.
While we don’t all need to be speed demons, having more technique than you need makes everything easier to play. This is how I worked on building that speed.
Finger exercises to build dexterity, independence and protect yourself from injury.
Also called ‘pinch harmonics’ (usually by guitarists). Learn how to add this great sound to your arsenal.
Everybody loves harmonics and they can add so much spice to your lines (when used judiciously). They are also just a ton of fun to play!
Learn to further control your sound using a myriad of muting techniques for your plucking and fretting hands.
I use these ‘percussive strikes’ all too much (but they’re just so much fun!). I also find that they can really help me feel and vibe with a groove. A lot of folks asked about how I developed them so, here you go!
A neat trick showed to me by Robert ‘Bubby’ Lewis and then again by Laurence Mollerup (who showed me what I was doing wrong). Very easy and very useful on certain gigs to get a synthier sound without any pedals!
A quick peak at some of my ‘Right Hand Drive’ style techniques and how I practiced them using chord shapes as a tool.
More Right Hand Drive style plucking exercises using the thumb. This one is a workout!
The foundation of what arpeggios are, how we build them for different chord types as well as an explaining what ‘inversions’ are.
>>REFERENCE<<