Know Your Arpeggios! The Stuff of Which Great Bass Lines Are Made.

I have been using Crescendo music notation software for the past few days, to write out bass lines, to experiment with arranging the notes in the chords (arpeggios to us bassists), to gain understanding of what works and what doesn't.  To do this, I need to know what notes are in a particular chord, such as A-7, BbMaj7, B-7(b5), etc.  I have these notes partially memorized, but I am not completely there yet.  So I refer to arpeggio charts (that I made myself in Excel), to see what notes are available.

For example, here are the first two lines of Autumn Leaves, written out in Crescendo music notation software (which is very easy to use).  (Click in the image to see full size):

A free version of Crescendo Music Notation software is available for download,  and the licensed version for home use is a bargain at $35 ($50 for business use).  See this link.

To facilitate building the bass line, I put the chord notes just below each bar.  For example, the notes in A-7 (A minor 7) are A, C, E & G.  Then I put quarter notes in each bar that correspond to the chord notes, but arranged in an ascending or descending order, and using passing notes where needed.  (Note:  the notes below each bar show the notes in order, but the notes in the bar above are arranged differently).  For example, the first bar is A-7 and the notes in A-7 are A, C, E & G.  However, the notes written in the bar are A, B, C and E.  (The B is a passing note, not a chord note).  In the next bar we have D7 (D dominant 7) and the notes are D, F#, A and C, but the notes I used in the bar are D, E, F# and A.  The E is a passing note.

You may need a reference of arpeggios in order to create your own bass lines.  Here is a graphic I made of major 7 chords, dom 7 chords, minor 7 chords, and minor 7 flat 5 chords.  This chart may help you learn your arpeggios, as well as choose notes for each bar in your compositions.

Please report any errors you may see.

Building Great Bass Lines

If you want to be a great bass player, you need to understand chord structures and bass lines.  A great bass line is a string of notes that move smoothly from one chord to the next.  Generally the notes go up and then come down, a nice swing from low to high to low again.

I am really into studying bass and the composition of bass lines to jazz standards.

I am using my musical notation software to write walking bass lines to jazz standards.   This is giving me insights into jazz and chord structures.

My musical notation software allows me to write out a sheet of music, using the notes that I choose myself.  Then it lets me play the music back on my computer, so I can hear how the composition sounds.  If I don’t like the sound, I can change the notes to make it better.

I am studying something called “voice leading,” which means that when you play one chord (say Cm7 followed by F7), you move from the last note in C7 to the nearest note in F7, not necessarily to the root note, but to whatever note is closest.  It could be the 1^st, 3^rd, 5^th or 7^th of F7 in this example, but it can also be a passing note, a note in the respective scale that is not a note in the chord.

You could play Cm7 followed by F7 using chord notes in order:  C Eb G Bb  --  F A C Eb and it would work but sound dorky.  Using voice leading you could smooth out the bass line by playing the chords in this order:  C D Eb G, F G A C.  of course, D is not a note in Cm7 and G is not a note in F7, these are passing notes that smooth out the bass line and it sounds good.  The best use of passing notes are on the 2^nd and 4^th notes in the chord.

I am writing out a bass line to Autumn Leaves in G minor (Bb major) just to solidify my understanding.  I won’t do this for every song in my repertoire, but I will study each song separately to get the gist.

More about this later.