Tag Archives: jazz on 6 string bass

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

Video July 6, 2021 jccoxjazzbass

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

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.

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Autumn Leaves – Bass Duet – Double Bass & 6-String Electric Bass – Bass Practice Diary 157

Video May 11, 2021 jccoxjazzbass

Autumn Leaves – Bass Duet – Double Bass & 6-String Electric Bass – Bass Practice Diary – 11 May 2021

I always thought it would be fun to make a jazz trio with double bass, electric bass and drums. In my head it would be something like this. However, my double bass skills are not the best. So ideally in this trio I would play the electric bass and the double bass would be played by someone who can solo, play with a bow and express themselves musically on the instrument.

I shot this video by recording the double bass part first. It was done in just one continuous take. At the point when I played the upright bass part, I hadn’t worked out any of the electric bass part. Having recorded the upright bass I then had a few goes at playing along with it with my Overwater Hollowbody 6-string bass. Once I was happy with what I was doing, I shot the bass guitar part. If you saw my video from two weeks ago featuring three jazz lines on 4-string bass, you might notice that I used one of the lines at the end of the first solo chorus.

I was basically just practicing improvising on a standard. It’s something I do quite regularly, although I rarely go as far as recording a bass line on the upright. Normally I’ll record the bass line on bass guitar and play over that. However, I feel like the double bass adds an extra layer of jazz authenticity, even with my limited double bass skills.

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Freedom Jazz Dance – Jazz Melody on 6-string Bass – Bass Practice Diary 149

Video March 9, 2021 jccoxjazzbass 1 Comment

Freedom Jazz Dance – Melody on 6-String Bass Guitar – Bass Practice Diary – 9th March 2021

Miles Smiles has been one of my favourite Miles Davis albums for a long time. The most famous composition on the album is probably Footprints by Wayne Shorter. Which is a minor blues that has become a staple of jazz jam sessions. Today, I’m looking at another track on that album Freedom Jazz Dance.

The Second Great Miles Davis Quintet

The Miles Davis band at that time (1966) contained four young musicians who would go on to become some of the most important figures in modern jazz. Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams are all great composers as well as improvisors and band leaders. So, it was a little bit unusual for them to record a tune that was written by someone who wasn’t in the band.

Freedom Jazz Dance was written by a tenor saxophonist called Eddie Harris. He had recorded the tune himself a year earlier. When you listen to the Eddie Harris version of Freedom Jazz Dance, you quickly realise that the Miles Davis band has completely reconceptualised and recomposed the tune. Harris’ version is built on a funky groove between the bass and piano on a Bb7 chord. The melody is played in one continuous sequence with three phrases.

In Miles Davis’ version of the tune, the melody is broken down into the three phrases. They are separated by space to improvise for the rhythm section. Initially only by bass and drums. When the melody is repeated, Herbie Hancock begins to interject chord voicings. The Bb7 harmony from the original is retained, but the funky groove is gone and replaced by an altered dominant sound, and a much freer and more improvised approach to the groove.

Ron Carter

I think Ron Carter is one of the most important bass players in the history of jazz. He started his career as a classically trained cellist, who struggled to get work in touring orchestras at the time due to racist segregation laws in the Deep South. So, he made the switch to jazz double bass and became one of the most prolific musicians of the second half of the twentieth century. According to his wikipedia page, he has appeared on over 2,200 recording sessions, making him one of the most recorded musicians in history.

He still plays today at age 83 and I’ve been fortunate enough to see him perform live on a couple of occasions. The first time in 2003, when I was still a teenager, he was leading a quintet of much younger musicians. He had adopted the Miles Davis role as senior member mentoring the young talent. It was a truly memorable gig. I can still vividly remember the rendition of Flamenco Sketches that they played that night. It sent shivers down my spine. After that I saw him play one more time in a drummer-less jazz trio featuring guitarist Russell Malone and pianist Mulgrew Miller. It was musicianship of the highest caliber.

When I listen back to Miles Smiles, which I have been doing this week. It reminds me what an incredible musician he is. I think the partnership he shared with drummer Tony Williams was one of the most brilliant and innovative rhythm sections in jazz history. There are good reasons behind why the members of that band went on to become some of the biggest stars in modern jazz.

Why Learn a Jazz Tune on Bass?

I know some bass players might not agree, but I think it’s important to learn to play melodies. I think bass players are often guilty of only looking at the chords and not thinking much about the melody. This tune is a great demonstration of why that approach won’t always work. There is only one chord here, Bb7. If you only look at that, it doesn’t tell you anything about the composition. Only once you look at the melody will you understand the composition.

From a purely technical perspective, learning jazz melodies will also help to build your technique on bass. And it will also help you learn about jazz phrasing and vocabulary. I would suggest that anyone wanting to learn how to improvise in a jazz style, needs to learn as many jazz tunes as possible. Here is how I play the Freedom Jazz Dance melody on 6-string bass.

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Extended Arpeggios on 6-String Bass – Bass Practice Diary 98

Video March 3, 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.

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.

Bass Blog

16th Note Jazz Lines – Bass Practice Diary 69

August 13, 2019 jccoxjazzbass 2 Comments

16th Note Jazz Lines on 6 String Bass with Bass TAB – Bass Practice Diary – 13th August 2019

This week I’ve written out some 1/16th note jazz lines on a II-V-I chord progression in C major. If you’ve read my book Electric Bass: Improve Your Groove, then you’ll know that I love to practise subdivisions. In fact, I believe it’s probably the most important thing that every bass player should practice. And this week I’ve been working on a tricky little subdivisions exercise. Playing 1/16th notes on a jazz swing feel!

Why is it hard to play 16th notes on a swing feel?

A 1/16th note feel can be described as a straight feel. Straight, in this case means anything with a subdivision that is divisible by two. 1/8th notes, 1/16th notes etc. But a swing feel is a triplet feel. Meaning the subdivision is three not two. So playing 1/16th notes over a triplet (swing) feel requires playing a different subdivision to the rest of the band. And that requires really good time keeping discipline.

You’ll also notice that the 1/16th notes feel fast, even on a quite moderate tempo swing feel. So there are technical challenges in playing these lines accurately. As well as the challenge of getting the timing right. Here are the lines that I wrote out for the video. If you try playing these, I would recommend counting the 1/16th notes using the Konnakol syllables Ta-Ka-Di-Mi as I did in the video.

16th Note Jazz Line - Example 1 — 16th Note Jazz Line – Example 1

16th Note Jazz Line - Example 2 — 16th Note Jazz Line – Example 2

16th Note Jazz Line - Example 3 — 16th Note Jazz Line – Example 3

If you’d like to learn more about practicing subdivisions on bass guitar then check out my book or you can watch this short video!

Johnny Cox Music