"100 Yard Dash" Bass Line

Here is nice old school bass line by Raphael Saddiq on his retro tune called "100 Yard Dash". It repeats throughout the entire song with some slight variations. It has an interesting phrase that starts off the beat and the trick is keeping it solid and on those off beats to really glue the entire song together. Check it out.

Here is the track off the album:

8 Ways To Play Triads ... in C Melodic Minor This Time

The major version of the triad exercises were such a hit, here are the same 8 exercises except this time in C melodic minor, which has a couple of curve balls in it.

Just a reminder that melodic minor has only one flatted note, the third, Eb. The rest of the notes are the same as C Major. The notes in the scale are:

C D Eb F G A B C

This combination of notes makes for some unique chords like the augmented triad (the one with the plus sign) and more than one diminished chord. That means this scale has a lot of possibilities so work these out and transpose them to other keys or play them in different orders and make up some new combinations of your own. Clicking on each image below will open a larger version for you to download or print.

8 More Ways To Play All The Triads In C Major

I have been goofing around (well all I do is goof around really) with a new project and here is a sneak peek of what it is going to look like. More triads. Lots and lots and lots of triads.

Here are just 8 of the many many ( trust me.....there are many ) ways to play the triads that occur in the key of C Major. The fancy music word for that is "diatonic" which just means, "only using the notes in that key".

Triad Palooza - Diatonic Triad Variations

Here is a fun little set of exercises to keep you busy for, oh, the next 3 or 4 years or so.

It takes all the triads that are in the key of C Major and runs some ascending, descending and mixed (up and down) arpeggio patterns. Some patterns are "close position" meaning the notes are all within one octave, and some are "open" where they span more than one octave.

The patterns are as low as possible on the neck and they are guaranteed to be playable on a standard tuned 4 string. You can extend the patterns by playing them in higher octaves if you want and if you have a 5 or a 6 string you can move them around as appropriate.

The patterns outline each chord that appears naturally in C Major, so - C maj, D min, E min, F maj, G maj, A min and B dim. The patterns don't all start on just the root of the chord, they also start from the 3rd and the 5th too. "Inversions" for those theory showoffs in the crowd.

Transmogrifier 2.0 Released

Much to the chagrin of *ahem* certain people, version 2.0 of the Bergonzifying Transmogrifier has been released!

http://bassoridiculoso.net16.net/

New features include:

• Adds Treble Clef output with piano sound
• Adds support for patterns of 8th and 16th notes (in addition to the original quarters.)

More Random Notes for Pitch Recognizing

The last page of random notes was surprisingly popular, so here is another pdf with random notes on the bass clef.

This one is in eighth notes and has a lot of notes above the staff so you can practice recognizing those higher notes up on those ladder rungs.

Again these are not very realistic musical examples, the point is just to recognize the notes on the lines and spaces. The notes were auto-generated totally random, so there are jumps and lines that don't make any sense in there musically speaking.

This is not unlike most of the other postings up here, but at least this time you have been warned. Enjoy.

The stuff worth learning. That's what Damian says.

I know re-posting articles is not exactly the height of insightful blogging...but this article by Damian Erskine is right on. When someone like him says "this is the stuff you need to know and should be practicing" it is worth listening too.

There is a reason there ain't no TAB up in here. It's gonna mess with your mind, son. Screw you up and hold you back. TAB takes away more than half of the information in any piece of music it represents. It's a trick that makes you think you are learning things and it is actually making you understand less about what you are playing. It is the pornography of bass playing. It puts all kinds of crazy ideas in your head about what bass playing is about that ain't real.

Damian Erskine's NoTreble article.

Lets see, what's Mr. Erskine talk about in that article...knowing how to spell chords,Um, check.

Let's see what else..um, arpeggios and their inversions, oh yea, check, check, and lets, see, check!
So there ya go.

Who ya gonna believe?

How good do you want to be?