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Chord Tones in Jazz Solos – Bass Practice Diary – 31st March 2020

When you’re playing a jazz solo, is it better to think about scales or chord tones (arpeggios)? I’ve heard musicians having that kind of debate before, but I’m presenting it here as a bit of a trick question. Because the chord tones exist within the scales so why would you think of them as being two separate things. I think it really helps if you focus on chord tones in jazz solos. You could think of your improvised lines as being lines that connect the chord tones.

Connecting Chord Tones

Chord tones are probably the strongest notes that you can use in a melody. But if you play melodic lines that only use chord tones, they can sound boring and formulaic. So I try to find ways of showcasing the chord tones in my solos by placing them in key places, like at the start and end of phrases. Scales are a great way of connecting up chord tones, so my advice is to always know where the chord tones are, even when you’re using scales.

I’ve featured the altered scale before in my Bass Practice Diary. It’s a great way of creating an outside sound on dominant 7th chords. It works because it features the three strongest chord tones in a dominant 7th chord, the root, 3rd and 7th. But the other four notes in the scale are outside notes or altered notes, b9, #9, b5 and b13. If you feature those altered notes too heavily it can sound very uncomfortable. But if you use them as notes to connect up the three chord tones it can create some really cool tension and release.

So, to take advantage of that, you need to know where the chord tones are. Here’s a C altered scale with the root, 3rd and 7th marked.

C altered scale with C7 chord tones

Here are some simple lines I came up with that connect chord tones on a C7 chord. This one starts and finishes on the root.

C7 altered lick – Root to Root

This is the same lick finishing on the 7th.

C7 altered lick – Root to 7th

Here’s one that starts on the root and finishes on the 3rd.

C7 altered lick – Root to 3rd

Chord Tones in Jazz Solos – Bass Practice Diary 101
March 31, 2020 jccoxjazzbass
Passion Dance by McCoy Tyner on fretless 6-string bass – Bass Practice Diary – 10th March 2020

One of the most memorable musical moments in my life was seeing McCoy Tyner play live at the Jazz Cafe in London in 2003. I was 19 years old and I had recently got very into the John Coltrane Quartet. My parents had given me A Love Supreme on CD as a 19th birthday present. The thought that I was going to watch the pianist from that album play live, was almost too exciting!

I arrived when the doors opened (about 3 hours before the gig started) to get myself a position with the best view. I literally sat about a metre from McCoy Tyner’s right hand as he played an absolutely burning set with his trio, which at that time included the unbelievably talented Charnett Moffett on bass and Eric Harland on drums. It’s a memory I will never forget. At that point in my life I had never heard music played with that level of intensity by a small acoustic jazz band.

I’ve heard many musicians imitate McCoy Tyner’s style over the years. But I’ve never heard anyone who could do it like him. I saw him live many more times after that, always in concert halls rather than jazz clubs. I even met him on one occasion. But it’s that first gig in a jazz club in London that will always stick in my memory as one of my happiest musical memories. It was one of the first times that I’d seen “the real thing” up close and it had a huge impact on me.

It was with great sadness that I heard about McCoy Tyner’s passing this week at the age of 81. He was a truly unique musician, and his influence on modern jazz is enourmous.

Quartal Harmony

McCoy Tyner is best known for the sound of quartal harmony. That’s when you arrange chord voicings in fourth intervals. It’s a very distinctive sound, and instantly recognisable in modern jazz. Passion Dance uses that quartal sound, and is a great example of McCoy Tyner’s signature sound. My rendition certainly doesn’t capture the intensity with which McCoy Tyner used to play it. But I wanted to put my own tribute out for a great musician who influenced me massively.

Passion Dance by McCoy Tyner on fretless 6-string bass – Bass Practice Diary 99
March 10, 2020 jccoxjazzbass
Extended Arpeggios on 6-String Bass with Bass TAB – Bass Practice Diary – 3rd March 2020

Extended arpeggios are a great way to practice harmony on 6-string bass. All chords and arpeggios derive from scales, and an extended arpeggio is a brilliant way to present the sound of a scale or mode, without it sounding like you’re playing a scale. For that reason, they work brilliantly in solos.

How to work out an extended arpeggio

The extended arpeggio ideas that I’m using in the video are actually much easier to work out than they sound. You can work them out by taking a scale, in this case the C major scale, because I’m using a II-V-I chord progression in C major. And when you have your scale, you can play the extended arpeggios using alternate notes in the scale. There are seven notes in most major and minor scales, so when you’ve played seven consecutive alternate notes, you’ve played every note from the scale as an arpeggio.

Here’s how it works. The notes of a C major scale are C, D, E, F, G, A & B. Imagine you’re playing a two octave scale so each note happens twice, giving you fourteen notes across the two octaves. Take the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th and 13th notes of that two octave scale. These are notes C, E, G, B, D, F & A, which is your C major extended arpeggio.

NB. Jazz musicians often play a #11, in this case F# on a major 7th extended arpeggio.

Next you could take the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, 12th & 14th notes of the two octave scale. This will give you a D minor 7th extended arpeggio. This is the arpeggio I featured in the video.

Arpeggios with a chord substitution

Here is the full example that I featured in the video.

Extended Arpeggios on 6-String Bass

I’ve explained how I created the extended arpeggios for the Dm7 and Cmaj7 chords. So, how did I create the arpeggio that I played on the G7 chord? I could have done it using all the notes of a C major scale. But I felt that would sound boring if all three arpeggios used the same set of notes.

Instead, I used the notes of a common chord substitution, the tritone substitution. It’s a harmonic device that jazz musicians love to use on dominant 7th chords. In this case, for the G7 chord, I’ve used an arpeggio for a chord with a root note that is three tones (a tritone) away from G, which is Db7. It works because the 3rd of the G chord, B, is the 7th of the Db chord. And the 3rd of the Db chord, F, is the 7th of the G chord.

So, I harmonised my extended Db7 arpeggio using notes from Gb major. Db7 is chord five in the key of Gb major. This creates a lot of dissonances, some notes in Gb major work in the key of C major, but also some sound quite dissonant. But that’s the point, jazz musicians love to create tension by using dissonances on a V chord before resolving them on the I chord.

Extended Arpeggios on 6-String Bass – Bass Practice Diary 98
March 3, 2020 jccoxjazzbass
Warwick Red Label vs Black Label Bass Strings – Bass Practice Diary – 25th February 2020

I’ve wanted to test the Warwick Red Label bass strings for a while, because I’ve always felt they represent incredible value for money. The five string set in the video cost me €12.40 on Thomann, while a four string set at the time was less than €10. That’s incredibly cheap for stainless steel round wound bass strings from a reputable brand like Warwick. But value for money is one thing and performance is another, so I wanted to properly test these budget strings against the more expensive Warwick Black Label stainless steel bass strings.

Warwick Bass Strings

Warwick make a lot of different types of bass strings now. They have their high end coated strings called EMP, which are more expensive, but the coating will make the strings last much longer. There wouldn’t be any point in comparing a coated and uncoated bass string. The coated strings would obviously age better, so I didn’t include those in this comparison.

Warwick also manufacture bronze acoustic bass guitar strings in both Red and Black Label sets. I usually put the Warwick Red Label bronze strings on my Warwick Alien Deluxe Acoustic 6-string Bass Guitar. No other 6-string bronze set comes close to being as affordable for that quality of string. They also make tapewound strings which also sound good on acoustic bass guitar.

But if you’re looking for conventional stainless steel or nickel wound guitar strings, then Warwick has three products. Red Label, Yellow Label and Black Label, with red being the cheapest and black the most expensive. The Yellow label strings are nickel plated and made in the USA. They tend to be similar in price to the black label strings, but slightly cheaper. I didn’t include them in this test because I wanted to test the Stainless Steel Red Label strings against a similar Stainless Steel set, which is the Black Label strings.

Warwick Red Label vs Black Label Bass Strings – Bass Practice Diary 97
February 25, 2020 jccoxjazzbass

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Gallery

This gallery contains 11 photos.

Johnny Cox – Bass Photo Gallery
February 7, 2014 jccoxjazzbass

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Creative Bass Playing Blog

Homepage
Learn How to Play Bass Grooves in Odd Meters
A Complete Guide to Harmonics on Bass – Part 1: Natural Harmonics
A Guide to Harmonics on Bass – Part 2: Artificial Harmonics
Everything You Need to Know About Harmony on Bass Guitar
How to Use Outside Notes In Your Basslines
Learn to Play Jazz Chord Extensions on Bass Guitar
Right-Hand Tapping Chord Extensions
A Guide to Playing Offbeat Bass Grooves
Use This Cool Metronome Trick to Develop Superb Timing
Hammer Ons and Pull Offs – Left Hand Technique Lesson
Play Bass Grooves in 6/8 Time Signature
Play Bass Grooves in 9/8 Time Signature
Learn to Play Triplet Rhythms on Straight 16th Note Bass Grooves
Learn to Play Giant Steps Jazz Lines
Use Intervals of a 4th To Create a Modern Jazz Sound
Learn to Play Quartal Chord Voicings on Bass Guitar
How to Use the Diminished Scale in Jazz
8th and 16th Note Bass Lines – Part 1 – Eighth Note Bass Grooves
8th and 16th Note Bass Lines – Part 2 – Sixteenth Note Bass Grooves
Learn Right-hand Techniques
Learn Left-hand Techniques
Learn to Play Intervals
Playing Chords – Part 1
Playing Chords – Part 2
Playing Chords – Part 3
Playing Chords – Part 4

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