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A Rick Beato Line on Bass Guitar – Bass Practice Diary 164

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Rick Beato Modal Jazz Line Arranged for 6-String Bass – Bass Practice Diary – 6th July 2021

If you don’t already follow Rick Beato then you should check him out. He has one of the biggest serious music channels on YouTube with over 2 million followers. He’s a music teacher, multi instrumentalist and producer who teaches everything from music theory to ear training to improvisation to production techniques and much more. He has recently released a series of guitar lessons called Quick Lessons Pro in which he breaks down a number of brilliant melodic and harmonic ideas. I’ve been looking at some of these this week and here is a line from the very first lesson which I’ve arranged onto 6-string bass.

Csus Mixolydian Modal Line

The line is essentially based around Csus chord voicings and the mode in question is Mixolydian. The chords that I’m playing in the video are all diatonic to that mode. The progression is C7sus – C7sus/D – Bbadd9 – Gm11 – Csus – Cadd9.

Rick’s melodic and harmonic approach is absolutely beautiful, and you can hear the melody in this even played down two octaves. I’ve tabbed this in the positions I played it. Although the phrasing markings reflect how he wrote it more than how I played it. Some of my hammer-ons and slides are in different places to where he played them on guitar.

Csus Mixolydian Modal Jazz Line by Rick Beato Arranged for 6-String Bass
Csus Mixolydian Modal Jazz Line by Rick Beato Arranged for 6-String Bass

I’ve played the line two octaves below where Rick plays it on the guitar. I initially played it one octave lower, but I just enjoyed playing it more in the lower octave. It just felt like it fitted the range of the bass better. There is a challenge to recording a line like this in such a low register. Which is that when people listen to my videos on phone and laptop speakers, the speakers can’t cope with the low end. In order to mitigate that problem, I’ve eq’d out a lot of the low end. So it doesn’t quite have the impact that it had when I was playing it, but at least you can hear the notes on the low strings.

Bass Blog

Introduction to Triad Pairs on Bass Guitar – Bass Practice Diary 90

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Introduction to Triad Pairs on Bass Guitar – Bass Practice Diary – 7th January 2020

This week I want to introduce some basic triad pairs exercises. The basic concept of playing triad pairs on bass is that you take two triads (three note chords) that don’t have any notes in common. Meaning that you have six different notes. And then you use those triads to makes lines and exercises.

Why use triad pairs?

Triad pairs are now a really common concept in jazz improvisation. But it’s not only jazz musicians that use them. You can apply triad pairs to almost any genre of music. They work particularly well for improvisation, but you can also use them to write bass lines.

This week, I’m only going to introduce the most basic form of triad pairs. Which is when you take two major triads that are spaced a tone apart. The reason for spacing them a tone apart, is because the triads function like chords IV and V in a major key. So you can use these kind of lines in any major key by transposing the two triads to the notes of chords IV and V in the key.

The exercises

All of these exercises are played using the triads C major and D major. Which are chords IV and V in the key of G major. But that doesn’t mean that you can only use these in the key of G major. There are all kinds of interesting and creative applications of triad pairs which I’ll try and cover in my future videos.

There are three obvious ways to voice a triad (inversions). You can put the root at the bottom, the 3rd at the bottom or the 5th at the bottom. This first exercise demonstrates those three different inversions, which you need to learn really well if you’re going to get good at playing these exercises. Bar 1 uses the root position triads for both C and D and then bar 2 uses the 1st inversion and bar 3 uses the second inversion.

Triad Pairs - Exercise 1
Triad Pairs – Exercise 1

This next exercise uses a similar idea, but with triplets. So, you play three notes on each triad rather than four.

Triad Pairs - Exercise 2
Triad Pairs – Exercise 2

Finally, here is a pattern that plays four notes on C and then three on D.

Triad Pairs - Exercise 3
Triad Pairs – Exercise 3

The purpose of playing patterns like this one in exercise 3, is that it helps to make the exercise sound less like a pattern. If you’re playing triad pairs in an improvised solo, and you play three notes up and three notes down, like exercise 2. It will very quickly sound like you’re playing a repeating pattern. That’s ok if it’s the sound you want. But, if you want to make it sound less like a pattern, then a pattern with an odd number sequence (three then four) will create a less predictable feel when played as part of a solo.

PLAYING CHORDS ON THE BASS – PART 3 – TRIADS