25% Off All Of It

Happy multi-denominational winter holiday observance!

Yea. It has come to that time of the year where we give each other stuff for all kinds of different reasons.

In honor of this magical time of the year, starting today every book is available for 25% off. Even though some of you, and you know who you are, probably have been very, very naughty.

So, that means the new prices for all the books are:

The Book of Chord Tones - Major Chords - $14.99

The Book of Chord Tones - Minor Chords - $14.99

The Book of Chord Tones - Dominant Chords - $14.99

The Book of Triads - Major Scale - $7.50

The Book of Triads - Melodic Minor Scale - $7.50

So even if you are one of those naughty types, you deserve to treat yourself to some bass presents and save some cash for all the other things that made you so naughty in the first place this year. Then you can make all those empty promises about being better next year.

All you have to do is go to lulu.com and use the coupon Code: BUYMYBOOK305 when you check out. The max savings is $50.00 but that amount actually covers every Basso book there is. You can use it for ANY book on lulu.com as well.


So happy winter solstice or whatever tree celebration you pray to or sacrifice this December and thanks for checking out the blog.

A Regularly Scheduled Interval

I have mentioned the completely awesome book called Forward Motion before and if you do not have it in your library and yet you are interested in improvisation at all, well, there is a big gap in your library, that's all I am saying. Its a book that has so much info in it that it will keep you busy for a long time and your girlfriend/boyfriend/xbox/playstation/dog/cat/gopher will feel hurt and neglected.

Here is a very small nugget pulled from one of the ways Mr. Galper talks about how to practice intervals, scales and arpeggios in the book. I am going to show you some examples using the interval of a third and the C Major scale so, buckle up.

Remember from earlier posts, that the word diatonic is just a fancy music school term for "only using notes in that key", thats all. So when I say "diatonic" and C major it just means that we are ONLY going to use the notes from that scale, and thusly, being C major, there will be no sharps or flats, just C D E F G A B C.

Now, if you take C Major notes, and you play a third off each note of the scale respectively, you get something like this:

Ascending Scale in Ascending Diatonic Thirds

bass lick tempo 90 2/4 |Cmaj c8 e Dmin d f |Emin e g Fmaj f a | GMaj g b Amin a c | Bdim b d c4

You probably have played that one, or heard something similar, it is a very common way to get the major scale under your fingers.

But there are always a couple of other ways to play the same set of intervals and when you start combining these different permutations, things start sounding less see-I-know-how-to-play-my-scales-y and more like phrases and licks that you can use during a solo.

Here is another way to get through the major scale in thirds, where instead of going up a third, you descend a third, so the first pair of notes is E down to C:

Ascending Scale in Descending Diatonic Thirds

bass lick tempo 90 2/4 | Cmaj e8 c Dmin f d | Emin g e Fmaj a f | GMaj b g Amin c a | Bdim d b c4

Now you can alternate each group of thirds, with the first group descending:

Ascending Scale - First Third Descending

bass lick tempo 90 2/4 | Cmaj e8 c Dmin d f | Emin g e Fmaj f a | GMaj b g Amin a c | Bdim d b c4

And you can alternate with the second third descending:

Ascending Scale - Second Third Descending

bass lick tempo 90 2/4 | Cmaj c8 e Dmin f d |Emin e g Fmaj a f | GMaj g b Amin c a | Bdim b d c4

Now how to turn these into licks?

Well since all of these notes are within a key, anytime you have a chord that works in C Major, so a C Major 7, or C Major #11, or even a Dmin, or Emin, or G7, or A min, you can use combinations of these same intervals.

Here is how that would work over a C Major chord, it is nothing but a combination of those intervals from above, but the rhythm is now 16ths and the patterns are moved around a little octave-wise.

Third Based Lick

bass lick tempo 120 2/4 | Cmaj e16 c f d g e b g | c a d b c+4

That is just one piddly example, there are a million ways you can do this, for example:

1. Don't play the thirds in scale order, do them in another order, like go something like C, G, D,A,E,B F, C which is going up in 5ths. So C E, B G, F D, A C etc.
2. Repeat one or two patterns before going to the next one
3. Change the rhythm
4. Mix up other intervals, don't just do it in thirds, do the first one as a third, the next one as a fourth or a sixth and then mix up the directions ascending and descending.

This is another one of those lick-factory ideas where you can get a million different chunks of solos out of stuff like this. As per usual, you have to make this sound like it is not just scalar patterns but is actually a melody of some kind.

Of course, this works with minor scales too, and you can do all the intervals within any kind of scale - thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, and sevenths. Even bigger intervals if you wanted to, especially if you have an extended range bass, like ninths and tenths. Big stretches though.

So there ya go, something to chew on. Go nuts.

The Pentatonic Lick Factory

UPDATE - added a PDF that shows a bunch of examples

You can never have too many pentatonic licks. Ever.

But, in the real world what usually happens is first you learn the little box shapes, okay cool, then maybe some of the other shapes, the ones that start on notes other than the root, and then.....it kinda tapers off.

What can happen after a while is you just keep playing the same box-shape licks over and over. And over and over and over. Or maybe you find another pattern that fits under your fingers, but you only have one or two familiar patterns you default back to or they are the ones that fit under everybody's fingers. I mean, I certainly have never done that. Of course not. Never. Okay, I totally have.

Then the question becomes - Well, how do I make/invent/discover/create new material anyway? If only there were some repeatable, step-wise process one could use to generate new licks and phrases for use in solos. Oh what a great world it would be...

Of course there is.

And I am going to show y'all one.

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.

Janek's Diminished Exercises

Janek Gwizdala is one of my favorite players. Wait, I have been writing this blog for a week and said that like 3 times already. Hmmm. Why is that?

Oh yea, that's why, because he is a monstrous bad ass that sounds great and grooves.

Anyway, Janek has been doing video podcasts at his site and in one of them he goes over his practice routine. It's video 2 in the link the sentence above this, and in it he shows an exercise using a diminished to minor pattern he uses during his warm up. It is written out below for your harmonic enlightenment and pedagogical perusing.

It is a v-i resolution, but he plays a diminished chord (all minor thirds) on the way up, a half-step away from the i chord, and then comes back down an arpeggiated minor chord as the tonic, then turns that minor chord into the next diminished chord and goes all the way up the neck with that pattern. It sounds more complicated than it really is, and it sounds really cool. Go watch the video and then download the pdf below and sound all hip and jazzy and new york and shit.

Also, Janek is going to start doing videos every week. You can sign up for month or a quarter at a time and this is really one of the most amazing things about living when we do. For what is a really cheap price, you get to hear from someone actually doing it, how they actually do it. Direct and at the time of your choosing. In the entire history of music before us, if you wanted to learn how guys doing it in New York or Kansas City or Chicago or wherever were doing it, even 20 years ago, you had to GO TO NEW YORK. That was it, that was your only option. To even hear them you had to wait until they came through your town, IF they came through your town, and get a lesson? Yea, right. Now with the internet, the access we have to learning is some serious spaceage-flying-car-silver-jumpsuit-wearing stuff. We live in the future, man. My point being is that you have access to so much musical learning in ways that no other generation before us had, if you sound like crap, it's your own damn fault. Myself included in that indictment too, of course.