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All Aspects of ROCK & JAZZ

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Bass

Bass Finger Settings 2

Scordatura / Alternative Tunings. 5

Sordin (Damper) 6

Hammer on / PULL-OFF (Appoggiatura) 6

BENDS. 6

ORNAMENTATION. 6

DYNAMICS. 6

Standard Bass Phrases 7

Blues, Standard Phrases. 7

Jazz, Standard Phrases. 8

Rock, Standard Phrases. 8

Hip hop and Afar, Standard Phrases. 9

Folk Music, Standard Phrases. 9

Bass Links 10

General Reading. 10

Special Techniques. 10

Exercises. 10

STYLE. 10

WEB Sites. 11

Bass Finger Settings

Standard Hands

Standard Hands or Shapes are a tried and proven ergonomic and fast way to move your fingers in a given scale within an octave or moving from one octave to the next.

The standard hands can be moved to anywhere on the neck, except for the open string which have their own Hands. The Octave Shifts are shown in a separate diagram.

Major Hand

Natural Minor Hand

Blues Hand^*)

Harmonic Minor Hand

Mixolydian Hand

Melodic Minor Hand

NOTE No open strings used. The square shows the octaves. The Melodic Minor Hand has a position shift, shown with the large blue square.

You move from one octave to the next by moving the position of the hand after reaching the first octave. It can be done in several different ways, so the examples only show one solution out of many. Choose the one that fits your hand and the width of your bass guitar neck.

Major Octave Shift

Natural Minor Octave Shift

Blues Octave Shift

Harmonic Minor Octave Shift

Mixolydian Octave Shift

Melodic Minor Octave Shift

NOTE No open strings used. The square shows the octaves. The shows a glide with the finger to the next position. The Melodic Minor has no less than 4 positions!

Open Strings

Scales with open strings are limited to a few keys, E and A plus B, if you have a 5-string bass. Open strings may be used as leading notes in scales but only if you skip the main idea of the “hands”, that is the flexibility on the fretboard. Keep in mind that all genuine musicians try to avoid rules, unless the rules suit the music. In other words - every possible fingering is allowed as long as you make good music!

E Major with Open Strings

E Minor with Open Strings

E Blues with Open Strings

NOTE The square shows the octaves. The E and A blues with open strings is a very common and fast way of playing blues in the 60-ies style.

Articulation

Articulation is the quality of a sound like timbre, which happens to belong to the family of sound colours. You have seen a few of these tricks of the trade before, timbre, harmonics and slide for example, but in the following section, I will go into details with the most common means of articulation.