Running with the Bass: Part Two

September 7, 1999

Welcome back. I would like to thank all of you that took the time to contact me about Running with the Bass Part One. There was a very common recurring theme in the emails I received. Many of you have had a hard time finding bass related material that is between "Bass for Dummies" and something you would need a Doctoral degree in music to read. Many of you expressed a real interest in my approach to the subject and showed a real desire to see more. So, as promised, here is part two of Running with the Bass.

If you haven't read part one yet, I strongly suggest that you at least glance over that article first before reading this one. There are several ideas, concepts, and explanations of diagrams that will be needed in order to fully understand this article.

The focus of this article will be minor chords and scales, better understanding of the 7th and when to use them, and a beginning discussion on moving between chords. This article is aimed directly at the intermediate bass player. If you don't feel like you're there yet, print this article out and save it. When you have mastered Running with the Bass Part One you will be glad you did.

Minors

Let's start by discussing exactly what a minor chord is and when you use one. A minor chord is formed by lowering the 3rd of a major chord one half step. So, if a C major chord is:

Then a C minor chord is:

Normally a minor chord is used to give a more subdued or airy sound to the chord. This is a very useful chord to use as a passing chord to another chord, or as a bridge to the 2nd or 4th chord in the series. A beautiful example of the use of minor chords is the beginning of Hotel California by the Eagles. Here the minor chord gives an eerie almost translucent type of sound. A lot of rock music rarely uses minor chords due to the fact that heavy distortion on a guitar can make a minor chord sound rather nasty. However, in jazz, top 40, blues, and country music, minor chords are used all the time.

Playing bass against a minor chord presents some interesting challenges. To overcome or lessen these difficulties let's start by comparing the C major and C Dorian scales. If you never heard of Dorian before, it's very similar to the natural minor scale and sounds quite good when played over minor chords. By focusing on the Dorian, we can simplify our discussion a bit.

The frets between each note (see part 1 for a description of fret spacing) are:

Note that the distance between the 7th of the scale and its neighbors has changed, as well as for the 3rd. I will cover the use of the 7th in more detail later. For now, let's concentrate on the 3rd.

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