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Page 1 of 2 Introduction
I was about to send in part 1 of the Don Shelton interview for this month’s column when I got an email from a reader requesting that I get into bass lines as soon as possible. It seems that Sam D. is in the middle of writing an arrangement and wanted some help figuring out how to make up a “killer bass line.” I don’t know if this will be anything to die for, but I’ll share some of what I’ve figured out through listening, and trying (and listening, and trying. . .).
When I actually started collecting my thoughts on the subject, I realized that there are a whole lot of aspects I’d like to share about singing bass effectively in an a cappella context. It’s certainly too much to tackle in a single piece. I’m going to start with some ideas about walking bass lines (which is what I think Sam was needing help on), but even that is going to stretch into multiple segments. So here is the first in what may need to be an extended series of essays on singing bass and writing for the bass in your group.
I’ll start this time around by outlining the functions of a good bass line. Then we’ll explore some ideas on how to choose the notes for a walking bass line. In later installments, I’ll try to get to some rhythmic variations and ideas and also some techniques for performing and effectively presenting these lines, both on stage and in the studio.
The function of a good bass line
The function of a jazz bass line is primarily to accomplish three things: first is to establish time; Second is to establish pitch center; third is to establish and define the harmonic context, or the chord progressions. Each of these can be achieved in a variety of ways, or probably better stated as a continuum of techniques and methods.
The first place I recommend a bass singer (or bass player) go for a single source for learning to hear an effective walking bass line is Jamie Aebersold’s jazz play-along, volume 6, “All Bird” (http://aebersold.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=V06DS&Category_Code=AEBALL). This album features the great Ron Carter playing bass, with Ben Riley on drums and pianist, Kenny Barron. At this writing, there are 114 volumes in the series. Each volume has the drums panned center, the bass panned to one channel and the piano panned to the other side, so if you’re a pianist, you listen to the bass and drums side; if you’re a bass player (or bass singer), you listen to the piano and drums side.
However, if you’re learning to be a bass player (or singer), you should listen closely to everything that Ron Carter does on this collection. It’s consistently hip, effective, and completely in the pocket, both rhythmically and stylistically. There’s even a book of Carter’s bass lines transcribed exactly as he played them on the album (http://aebersold.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=RC1&Category_Code=AEBALL), which is basically a master class on how it should be done. If you stop reading right now, you already have enough information to get going.
There is always a degree of implication in a good bass line. Sometimes, the most effective bass line is the one that leaves more to the ear of the listener than one might expect. I don’t want to jump ahead to far, too fast, but one of my favorite bass lines ever is what Jaco Pastorius played on Dry Cleaner From Des Moines on Joni Mitchell’s album, Mingus. Chris Jisi and Jeff Andrews wrote out a very good transcription of it, available at Lucas Pickford’s web site (http://www.lucaspickford.com/transdry.htm). It is far from a traditional walking bass line, yet it establishes pitch center, time, and harmonic progression (a 12-bar blues) as effectively as any other could – and mostly through implication. While I’ve mentioned it, Lucas’ site has a long list of bass transcriptions (and many of other instruments as well), ranging from Ron Carter and Ray Brown to Eddie Gomez, Bootsy Collins, Rocco Prestia (Tower of Power), Marcus Miller, and, of course, Jaco. If you’re interested in singing bass lines, all of these names should be familiar to you and their sounds should be in your ear.
Time, pitch center and harmonic movement. Those are our goals as bass singers. If there is no vocal percussionist, then it’s all on us to establish the groove. If you work with a VP artist, then it’s actually more difficult, because instead of leaning on his or her time, you both must establish it independently, but together. Take one away and the other should sound just as strong in the groove as you do together. I don’t usually work with any VP in Clockwork, and the extent of our vocal percussion is pretty much me doing some “ts / dz” high hat on two and four from time to time, or maybe some snapping of fingers. We primarily depend on the bass line to define time.
That is, unless we have purposely switched that up and traded it off to another part. In the studio for our second CD, Tesseract, our producer, the great bass singer from the BOBS, Richard Greene, had an idea to deconstruct a song we’d recorded on our first album. Instead of leaning on the walking bass line as the original arrangement did, he wanted some other voice to take over the time and harmonic definitions.
Eric ended up with the job we’ve come to call “mosquito boy” on My Baby Just Cares For Me (featuring John Paddock on the solo). You can hear enough of it to get what I’m talking about on a free clip either at CD Baby or from Clockwork’s web site (http://www.clockworksingers.com/clockwork_store.htm). Eric’s part establishes time and does a lot to establish the harmony along with the backgrounds, leaving the bass part completely free to add interjections during the holes.
Choosing the Notes
The walking bass line evolved from the simpler two-beat style that can be found in most styles of early dance music, including country western, polka, mariachi, klezmer, Bavarian brass bands, and even Dixieland, among others. They all have a foundation in a bass line such as that found in Figure 1. It’s almost exclusively playing the root of the chord on beat one and the fifth of the chord on beat three. Any chord tone will do, and in measure two I substituted the third on beat three, since playing the fifth would have made it a repeat of the first note of the following bar, which just sounds kind of weak. Partly it’s because it’s not sufficiently interesting to my ear, but more importantly, it confuses where the chord actually changes.
Figure 1 - Simple two-beat bass line
Note: Terminology time-out: Walking bass line generally implies a four beats/notes to the bar; two-beat bass line implies two played notes to the bar.
If we take that basically two-beat bass line and fill in the rests with either chord tones (notes found in the chord we’re describing - for F7, that would include F, A, C and Eb) or a passing tone (a non-chord tone that falls between or adjacent to the two anchor notes we’re connecting), we get a basic walking line, as in figure 2.
Figure 2 - Simple walking bass line
It’s rather square, still, but it provides the basic function of a walking bass line, and it was pretty easy to put it together. Simply having a note on each beat allows us to drive the time a little more persistently than with a two-beat line. However, we can use some other note choices to make it sound even more convincing.
One of the things I figured out about making a bass line really feel good was that instead of having a sense of being on a chord for four beats, I liked having a sense of going toward the next chord. In Figure 2, this is illustrated in measures 1 (& 3) and 4. Both of those kind of sit on the chord and don’t really give a strong sense of where they’re going. Measure two, on the other hand, has a very directional feel to it, and it travels toward the downbeat of measure 3 more effectively.
By using some non-chord tones, we can enhance the directionality of the line, and thereby make it stronger. Two of the strongest directional moves are up a fourth and either up or down a half step. Going from beat four of bar 1 into beat one of bar 2 (and again in the next bar) shows the half step motion. From bar 4 into bar 5 shows the ascending fourth motion. We can do more of that and improve this bass line a bit more.
Figure 3 - Chromatic walking bass line
In this example, both in bar 1 and 2 the first two beats are establishing the chord, then beats three and four are traveling chromatically to the next chord, even though they aren’t necessarily chord tones. One thing is not intuitively obvious when you start to think about bass lines. If the direction of the line is persuasive (and not misleading), then it can have almost nothing to do with the current chord and it can still work quite well.
An example of that is to hold down a pedal (sustained) tone on the fifth of the key (in this case C is the fifth of F major) and just let that build some tension for four bars. But since the directional motion toward the Bb in bar 5 is convincing, the tension is effectively released, so it works.
Figure 4 - Pedal bass line
Actually, this sample suspends both the harmonic motion through the pedal note as well as suspending time in a way, by only playing off the beat and not stating the downbeat from the beginning until bar five. These are both devices to create tension, which is then resolved when the walking would start again in bar 5.
I’m going to close for right now with a sample walking bass line for a couple of choruses of 12-bar blues. Play around with it. Use the individual phrases, the techniques of getting from one chord to another in other contexts, if you can. This is one way to build up your own personal library of melodic fragments, from which you can draw when you are creating a bass line, either by writing it out or improvising it.
Figure 5 - Two choruses of 12 bar blues
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