Steve Lawson
Two lessons for the price of one? Nothing’s beyond subtlety of bass maestro Steve Lawson
Get great at the bass basics with sonic guru Steve Lawson, a man whose lessons will never stop being valuable, no matter how proficient you become
Welcome back to another fun-packed month of bass wisdom! This month we’re going to look at some applied learning and think a little about how we can maximise the impact of our practice time by combining areas of study to form exercises that are rich with discovery potential.
We’re going to combine two things that we’ve looked at before, in an effort to get twice as much out of one practice session. Firstly, we will be taking a deeper look at the articulation techniques that we explored last month. Secondly, we're going to be revisiting the Major pentatonic scale, familiarising ourselves with playing it all over the neck. The great thing about this approach is that while we're actively learning about one aspect of our study, we're still passively practising the other in the background. All set? Let’s dive in!
Let’s start by looking at the notes in our Major pentatonic scale again; here it is in the key of C:
Example 1
Now, there are two ways to think about how we move this across the neck. One relates to scales and the other to chords. In both instances, what we’re thinking about is what happens to the group of notes that we’re playing if we start on a different note in the sequence. We’re not going to change the group of notes; we’re still just going to be using C, D, E, G and A, but we’re going to arrange it so C isn’t the lowest note.
In scale terms, the range of one-octave patterns that we get by playing through the notes in a particular key, and starting on each note in turn, are called ‘modes’. If we do the same thing to a chord (start from each note in the chord and play through the rest of the notes in the chord across an octave) we call those new patterns ‘inversions’. So what we’re doing to the notes in the pentatonic can be seen as either forming the five modes of the pentatonic scale, or as inverting it.
The reason for explaining it both ways is that they offer two ways of conceiving the relationship between the group of notes. Scales are broadly horizontal in their formation (we play them one after the other), whereas chords are vertical (we’re dealing with notes conceived of simultaneously). The notes in our pentatonic scale can be thought of as a particular type of chord, in this case a C 6/9 chord. That looks like a complex chord symbol, but it just means that we’ve got the 6th note in the scale added and the 9th (which is the 2nd up one octave).
So, if instead of playing C, D, E, G, A, C, we remove the low C from the start and finish on the octave of the D instead, we get this pattern on the neck:
Example 2
Look at the tab for this sequence. It’s just a major 2nd (that's a step of two frets) played across three strings. Notice that the C – the root note of our parent scale or chord – is now the fifth note in the sequence. When we're thinking about the options that this gives us for a run or a fill, it's worth noting that we now have a way into lines that approach C from slightly unusual positions. Here’s one example:
Example 3
It’s quite a jaunty melodic pattern, right? Slower tempos are often a lot more revealing than fast tempos, as each note hangs around for longer and any discrepancies in your playing are left bare for all to hear. If you rattle through an exercise, fumbling your way from note to note at high speed, all the nuances can all get lost in a blur of fret buzz and string rattle, and we can kid ourselves that our chops are just flying! So slow down and concentrate on playing accurately.
Sometimes the sound we’re looking for can lead to a technique that’s a little uncomfortable to execute, but if the groove calls for a particular technique it’s better to learn that technique than to compromise the feel that we’re going for. Much of the time we’re looking for the most efficient way of playing, but every now and again a technique comes along that has a fabulous impact on the feel of a line, making it worth pursuing even if it's energyintensive. Repetitive slides across multiple strings definitely falls into that category.
Let’s look at the next mode of our pentatonic scale. Again, we take one note off the start, and add one at the end, so it becomes E G A C D E, as you can see on the next page:
“THERE’S AN AWFUL LOT OF AMAZING MUSIC THAT CAN HAPPEN WITH JUST THESE FIVE NOTES”
Example 4
With each of these modes, spend some time experimenting to see what the different starting note lends to the feel of playing them. Try out different articulations to see which ones work well with each mode. This pattern gives us two minor third (or three-fret) intervals, which gives us a good shape for trying out our slides and hammer-ons over a slightly larger interval. Let’s make a line out of it:
Example 5
Again, we’re starting on C as the root note of the chord. This time the line ends on a high E, and the repeat bar at the end takes us back to the start. Ending a bass-line on the Major third of a chord in this way (the E is two whole notes above C, making it the third note in the C Major scale) gives it a melodic feel and helps emphasise the ‘majorness’ of the chord. It’ll sound really happy and jolly. This can be useful for bringing those qualities to music if you want it to sound like the Beach Boys, or even the Minutemen, but we should also recognise that it's inappropriate for other settings. It’s unlikely to sound so great in a riff inspired by Pantera or Sisters Of Mercy.
You can take a little time here to experiment with playing this sequence in different positions. We can move the D and E notes on the G string up to frets 12 and 14 on the D string, so that the slide between the A and C leads nicely up the string a little further. I really enjoy exploring the back and forth between technical ideas that create new musical opportunities, and having musical ideas for which I need to find a technical solution. Practising variations on patterns like this, and finding as many different places as possible to play any particular sequence of notes, can often reveal new musical options that we might not have thought of without doing the exercise.
Mode 4 of C Major Pentatonic starts on the note G and looks like this:
Example 6
“PRACTISING VARIATIONS ON PATTERNS LIKE THIS, AND FINDING AS MANY DIFFERENT PLACES AS POSSIBLE TO PLAY ANY PARTICULAR SEQUENCE OF NOTES, CAN OFTEN REVEAL NEW MUSICAL OPTIONS”
Notice that we’ve dropped it down an octave from the previous patterns. When we’re learning shapes like this, it’s useful to be able to play them in different positions on the neck, but for bass-lines, having them comfortable in lower positions is going to have a more immediate application than disappearing up into the rarified air above the 14th fret.
Try playing the 3rd mode of our pentatonic, the one starting on E, using the open E, A and D strings; it offers a whole load of new possibilities for hammering on after playing the open strings. That’s a technique that’s used in a ton of different rock contexts and is well worth exploring.
Back to our pattern starting on G; that note is the fifth, which is a really strong note to focus on in a lot of bass-line contexts. The fifth leads very solidly back to the root, so finishing a line on the fifth can impart a sense of inevitability, solidity and trustworthiness as it resolves back to the root on beat one. But that expectation is also a thing we can mess with; if we go elsewhere, then the surprise that comes from setting up a strong resolution and then moving away can add a great deal to a line.
Let’s try coming down the scale on this one, which will give us a chance to try some pulloffs and downward slides:
Example 7
This is another jaunty line. It’s tricky to get away from that feel with the major pentatonic, and easy to create it if that’s the sound you’re looking for. Training your ear is as much about knowing how to find an expected sound as it is about instantly recognising what someone else is playing. Getting familiar with the sound of the major pentatonic all across the neck like this will ‘feed’ your ear with ideas, storing up a set of patterns and phrases that you can draw on for that kind of sound.
Our last mode of the C Major pentatonic starts on A, and the pattern we end up with is an A minor pentatonic. Learning that these two shapes are interchangeable is so, so useful in finding lines that will work in both major and minor harmonic contexts. The example below is a reminder of the shape.
Example 8
What’s different about the way I’ve laid the pattern out in the tab? That’s not our usual minor pentatonic shape, is it? This way, we get to see it in relation to the C Major pentatonic; the rest of the notes, other than the A, fit within our usual root position C Major pentatonic. With all of these shapes, moving them around the neck helps us to see how they interlock. There’s an awful lot of amazing music that can happen with just these five notes, as we’ve explored before. A world of groove awaits!