MASTER CHORD SUPERIMPOSITION
Welcome back! A cool way to add variety and melodicism to your basslines is by using what you already know from different degrees of the chord you are playing over. This is a phenomenon known as superimposition. As most bass players already know, a minor pentatonic scale (root-b3-4-5-b7),
this is a good place to start. This concept highlights a combination of chord tones and chord tensions. As I’m sure you know, chord tones are the lower structure of the chord (root-3-5-7), while chord tensions are the upper extensions of the chord (9-11-13). With that said, you could take the same scale pattern and, simply by moving the pattern to different starting notes, open up new worlds of melodicism.
In the following exercises, I’m going to show you how you can use three different minor pentatonic scales – in this case B minor pentatonic, E minor pentatonic and A minor pentatonic – over a Cmaj7 chord. By understanding how to do this in the key of C, you can easily transpose this concept to any key by remembering that the minor pentatonic scales would start from the 7, 3 and 6 of the major 7 chord in question. So, if we did this over Fmaj7, the minor pentatonic scales would be E minor pentatonic (7), A minor pentatonic (3) and D minor pentatonic (6).
Have fun with this one, and until next time, practise smart, work hard and play creatively!
By simply moving the scale pattern to different starting notes, you can open up new worlds of melodicism