Jazz Chord Progressions on Six String Bass – Part 1 – I III IV V – Bass Practice Diary – 1st October 2019

I’ve done a few videos by now about playing jazz chord voicings on the bass. So, this week I wanted to start a series of videos about playing jazz chord progressions. The idea is to take some of the chord voicings that you hopefully already know, and apply them to simple popular chord progressions. It’s the logical next step once you’ve started to incorporate chord voicings into your bass practice regime.

The I-III-IV-V or I-III-IV-V-I Chord Progression

The chord progression I’ve chosen this week is I-III-IV-V. And I’ve resolved all my examples back to the I chord at the end, so it’s actually I-III-IV-V-I. But that often doesn’t happen in real jazz situations. So, in the key of C major, the diatonic chords would be C major, E minor, F major and G dominant. However, in jazz the III chord can also be played as a dominant 7th chord. So, it could be E7 instead of E minor.

Many of these examples were inspired by the jazz guitarist Ted Greene and his book Modern Chord Progressions. The book is obviously written for guitar not bass but I’ve still managed to adapt some of his ideas onto my 6 string bass. I’ve included four examples in the video. Each one is in a different key, and here they are.

Jazz Chord Voicings on Bass Guitar

If you’d like to have a look at some chord voicings before you start trying to play these progressions. Then please check out any of the following videos. This is a video I made about playing jazz chord extensions on bass guitar. And here is a video about playing quartal chord voicings which are great for jazz. This one is a video about adding chord extensions using a right hand tapping technique.

There’s also the Oteil Burbridge video which I referred to in the video. And I’ve also done a four part guide to playing chords on the bass. Which is very old and needs to be updated, but it still contains some useful information.