Foundation

This is a preview of the educational program A Jazz Improvisation Almanac which is under development for the Outside Shore Music Online School. Feel free to browse this preview and learn what you can from it. For a more completed product, though, check out the original freely browsable jazz textbook, A Jazz Improvisation Primer.

The bass is usually the foundation of any ensemble it is a part of. You are responsible for outlining harmony both the harmony and the pulse. Without a strong bass part, an ensemble can sound weak. It is largely a thankless job, however. You are expected to play virtually every beat of every composition during a performance, and bass solos tend to be infrequent and not well received when they do occur. You must relish playing a supporting role if you wish to play the bass in jazz. On the positive side, however, good bass players are always in demand, as other musicians generally appreciate the value of solid support.

In your role as the outliner of the harmony, the important thing is to provide the foundation for the chord progression. A chordal instrument can provide any necessary color. The key notes for you to play are usually the root and the fifth. There are several reasons for this. First, these tend to be the notes that chordal instruments will omit from their voicings on the assumption that the bassist will be playing them:

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Still, you may wonder why the pianist could not be responsible for roots, perhaps leaving you responsibility for playing thirds or other color tones. Centuries of experience with tonal harmony in classical music has taught us that chords sound most balanced with the root on the bottom:

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When playing ballads in a jazz style, whole notes are often most appropriate, and these will usually be roots:

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In order to provide more rhythmic motion, you might wish to use half notes, and in that case, you will not want to simply repeat the root. It will normally be the fifth of the chord that you should add:

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The fifth has two points in its favor. First, it creates the effect of a V-I progression leading back to the root, which serves to reinforce the chord. The second point has to do with the overtone series. A full explanation of the overtone series is beyond the scope of this program, but it has to do with the vibrations that create sound. Any time you play a note, a series of vibrations are created which form a natural series of notes that look like this:

[EXAMPLE]

Note that the intervals on the bottom of the series are the octave, the perfect fifth, and the perfect fourth. These are the most natural intervals to hear in the bass. Also, note that if we consider the first note of the series to be the root, the first four notes in the series are all roots and fifths. Playing the root and fifth of a chord exploits these features of the overtone series, which is fundamental to how we hear music.

On the other hand, if you play nothing but roots and fifths, your part will contain many leaps. In order to create a more melodic bass part, you will need to use other notes. When another note is played in the bass, however it almost invariably creates some amount of tension. Of course, tension is not bad in itself, but you should be aware of the tension and how to resolve it. For example, consider the following example:

[EXAMPLE]

In the second measure, the bass is playing E, which is the third of the C7 chord. This is a dominant seventh chord, and it resolve upward by fourth to the F chord in bar three. The E is functioning as a leading tone for the F scale, and therefore it is natural to resolve it upward by step to the F in bar three.

As another common example, consider the following progression:

[EXAMPLE]

In the third measure, the bass is playing G, which is the fifth of the C chord. Since the chord resolves to a G7 chord, the G in the bass can be held constant against the two chords, and indeed, this tends to make the whole C-G7 progression sound like one G7 chord.

In the next section, we will consider walking bass lines, in which you play a different note on every beat. Even when playing walking lines, however, these same principlies apply to the notes played on the strong beats - the first beat of each measure, and the third beat of the measure in 4/4 time (particularly if there is a chord change on that beat).

As a bassist, you are also responsible for outlining the pulse. Your role in keeping time is in many ways more important than the role of the drummer. This has many implications for your playing. For one thing, it means that the use of space is not as effective a device as it is for other instruments. Laying out does not subtly change the texture, it drastically alters the sound of the ensemble:

[EXAMPLE]

While this might be your goal, particularly in modern forms of jazz that do not emphasize the pulse, you should be conscious of the magnitude of the effect. Assuming your goal is to maintain the pulse, the use of repeating rhythmic patterns is especially appropriate. The walking bass lines discussed in the next section are one example of a repeating pattern. Walking lines are most appropriate in mainstream styles such as bebop. Other styles may depend on other patterns. Often, the root and fifth form the foundation of such patterns. For example, a typical jazz bossa nova uses the following pattern:

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A samba uses a similar pattern but twice as fast:

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The mambo and other Afro-Cuban forms use a pattern that anticipates each chord change:

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Jazz-rock fusion styles tend to use more complex patterns that are specific to the composition. For example:

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As with chordal instruments, you will probably not repeat a pattern exactly every time. Some variation is expected and desired:

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Also, you can create different textures with your bass part just as a chordal instrument can. A common technique is to play a different rhythm for the head than is used for solos. A common rhythm for heads in mainstream jazz styles is the two-beat rhythm, named for the fact that there are two beats played per measure. It is also referred to as half time:

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You might then go into a four beat rhythm for the solos:

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When playing in 3/4 time, you can either play just on beat one:

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Or you can play on every beat, as described in the next section on walking:

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You can also choose to subdivide the measure into two halves of a beat and a half each:

[EXAMPLE]

Copyright 2000 Outside Shore Music
Authored by Marc Sabatella

Foundation