Lessons in Bass Line Construction
Steve Schmidt
whale@leland.stanford.edu
Lesson 0 - Preliminaries
This is the first in a series of lessons whose focus is on constructing
bass lines. The main series of lessons presumes a small but nonzero amount
of musical knowledge on the part of the listener; mostly some things about
notes and time. It also presumes you know how to read TAB. This pre-lesson
is designed to teach that knowledge to anyone who doesn't already have it.
If you know how to find a C# on your bass, know what a quarter note rest
is, and can read TAB, then you can skip the rest of this and move on to Lesson
1. If not, or if the review will do you good, then read on!
A piece of music is composed of a series of notes. These notes are
organized into sets of 12 notes called octaves, and each of these 12
notes has a name. If you sit down at a piano, you'll see that it has
88 keys, 52 white and 36 black, and that each of these keys produces a
different note. The white keys all have one-letter names; the first one on
the left (lowest note) is called A, the next one up is B, and so on. The
seventh white key is called G, and the next white key, the eighth, is also
called A; it begins the second octave. The ninth white key is B, the tenth
C, and so on, until the 52nd and last white note, which is a C.
The black keys are named by their relation to the nearest two white keys,
so each one has two names. First, they may be called "sharp", with the name
of the white key below them: eg, the lowest black key is called A sharp, as
it's immediately above A. There is no black key immediately above B; the second
black note is C#, and so on up the keyboard. Second, black keys may also
be called "flat", with the name of the white key above them: thus, the lowest
black note can also be thought of as B flat, since it's immediately below
the B. Similarly, the black key between D and E can be called either D sharp
or E flat. For now, you can treat the two names as interchangable.
An octave runs from A to G#, 12 notes (7 white keys and 5 black keys)
and then the names repeat for the next octave. Actually, the starting point
doesn't matter: any 12 notes in a row (which will always contain 7 white keys
and 5 black keys) are called an octave.
The strings of a bass are tuned to produce the 4 notes E, A, D, and G
(from thickest string to thinnest). Thus, if you play an E on the piano,
and the open E string on your bass, you'll get the same note (if you choose
the right octave on the piano, that is). Moving up one fret on the string
produces the next highest note. That is, the open A string produces an A
note (hence the name). Fingered at the first fret, it produces an A sharp,
or B flat. Second fret produces a B. Third fret produces C (since there is
no black key above B), fourth fret C sharp, and fifth fret produces D, the
same note as the open D-string. And so on up the fingerboard. With this
knowledge, you should be able to find two or three versions of each note
on your bass. For example, you can get an F at the 1st fret of the E string,
at the 3rd fret of the D string, at the 8th fret of the A string, and at
the 10th fret of the G string. (The 3rd-D note and the 8th-A note are in
the same octave: the 1st-E note is one octave below and the 10th-G note is
one octave above.) Make sure you can find any given note somewhere on your
bass without too much effort, and that you know the names of the notes
produced by playing a given string at a given fret, at least up to the
12th fret.
The next thing to mention is the way songs are arranged in time. Songs
are divided into measures: a common song length is about 100 measures. Each
measure is a certain number of beats long: in almost all modern music there
are four beats to each measure, although other length measures are also used.
Each note in the song has a given duration, and a note that lasts for four
beats is called a whole note. A note that lasts for two beats is called a
half note, and two half notes are the same length as one whole note. Similarly,
there are quarter notes, eighth notes, and sixteenth notes. (In England
these notes have different names. I'll be sticking to American usage
throughout this lesson series.) Each quarter note receives one beat, and
the quarter note is the basic building block of time and of rhythm. Eight
eighth notes make up a four-beat measure, as you can see, as do four quarter
notes and 16 sixteenth notes. Measures can contain notes of different lengths,
so that a quarter note, a half note,and two eighth notes also make up one
measure.
Other time durations can be written by "dotting" a note: in standard
notation, one literally writes a dot next to the note. Dotting a note makes
it last half again as long as it normally would. Thus, a quarter note lasts
as long as two 8th notes: a dotted quarter note is 50% longer, so it lasts
as long as three eighth notes. Thus, two quarter notes have the same length
as a dotted quarter note and an eighth note. Similarly, a dotted half note
lasts for the same amount of time as three quarter notes: a dotted half note
and a quarter note together make up one measure.
The last thing to know is that rests, or times when the bass is not playing,
are named the same way: thus, a whole rest means that the bass does not play
for one measure. A quarter rest means that the bass does not play for one
beat, and there are eighth rests and dotted half rests and so on.
One last note: in some jazz and classical music, a note other than the
quarter note is given the one-beat length. Since almost all music is written
with the quarter note getting one beat, I've assumed it is so throughout
the lesson series. However, if you get into more difficult music, you may
run into music where the half-note or the eighth-note is one "beat" long.
My advice is not to worry about this until it comes up.
The last thing you need to know is how to read TAB. Bass tabulature, or
TAB for short, is a simple method for writing bass music. There are several
different versions of tabulature, but the following features are common to
almost all of them.
Bass tab is written on four-line staves. In text interfaces these are usually
written using dashed characters. Each space corresponds to one string on the
bass: the lowest space corresponds to the E string, the next lowest to the A
string, the next to the D string, and the highest to the G string. A number on
a given space represents a note played at the given fret on the corresponding
string; thus, to indicate playing a G at the third fret on the E string,
one would write:
G------------------------------------
D------------------------------------
A------------------------------------
E----3-------------------------------
Notes are played from the left of the staff to the right; thus, an
ascending G major scale might be written:
G------------------------------------
D-------------------2--4--5----------
A----------2--3--5-------------------
E----3--5----------------------------
Or, using open strings, it might be written like this:
G-------------------------0----------
D----------------0--2--4-------------
A-------0--2--3----------------------
E----3-------------------------------
Chords can be written by writing two numbers in the same vertical bar. Thus
one might write a simple A major chord as:
G-----9------------------------------
D-----11-----------------------------
A-----0------------------------------
E------------------------------------
which means to play an open note on the A string, to play a C# at the 11th
fret on the D string, and an E at the 9th fret on the G string.
Various fingering techniques can be noted in TAB as well. This is done by
writing a single character after the note being fingered. The most common of
these are:
h - hammer-on from previous note
p - pull off from previous note
\ - slide up to note
b - bend note
S - slap the note with the right-hand thumb (left hand if left-handed)
P - pop the note with the right hand (ditto)
t - tap the note with the right hand (ditto)
H - harmonic
Thus a funky bass line might be written like this:
G---------5P-7h-5p-------------------
D------------------------3b----------
A---0S\5-----------3S-5S----5S-5H---
E------------------------------------
A muted note (one that is not fingered cleanly and makes a percussive
sound rather than a clear tone) is written by placing an x on a line
instead of a number:
G------------5--7--------------------
D------------------------------------
A---5--x--x--------5--x--5-----------
E------------------------------------
Similarly, a rest is indicated by writing an r on a line (any line will do):
G------------5--7--------------------
D------------------------------------
A---5--r--r--------5--r--5-----------
E------------------------------------
When it is not obvious which left-hand (right-hand to lefties) finger should
be used to to fret a particular note, this may be indicated by writing a
number under the note, with 1=index finger, 2=middle finger, 3=ring
finger, 4=pinkie finger, and rarely, 5-thumb:
G---------5--7--5--------------------
D------------------------------------
A---0--5-----------------------------
E------------------------------------
1 1 3
It is becoming popular to indicate time in TAB by writing over each note
a letter indicating the time value of the note: s=sixteenth note, e=eighth
note, q=quarter note, h=half note, w=whole note. It is possible to add
dots to this system as is done with normal notes. In addition, vertical bars
are usually used to indicate measure breaks. TAB noted this way might look
like this:
w q s s e q h q. e e e s s e h
G-----|----5--7--5-------|-------------5--7--7-|----
D-----|------------------|-3--3--5--7----------|----
A---0-|-5-----------8--5-|---------------------|-5--
E-----|------------------|---------------------|----
--
Steve Schmidt <>< whale@leland.stanford.edu
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist
indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist
conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!