The Harmonious Blacksmith: A Music Theory Exploration

Ep. 18 : Music Theory - Bass Lines - Part 1

• Kevin Patrick Fleming • Season 2 • Episode 18

Share episode

Send us a text

Episode 18: BASS LINES

Episode 18 of THE HARMONIOUS BLACKSMITH : A MUSIC THEORY EXPLORATION is all about Bass Lines.  We will review a few terms to lead up to it like : Melody, Harmony, Chords, Chord Progressions, Scales, and even Gregorian Chant.

New terms include : Bass Lines, Range, Voice-Leading, Counterpoint, and SATB/4-part harmony.  We will discuss the 4 main vocal ranges for SATB Chorale-style compositions and how the Bass Range lends itself to Bass Lines.

In the end, we will take a famous song as well as the prototypical I-IV-V progression and play a "Bass Line Game" in order to understand how Bass Lines are constructed, function, and the overall creativity that is possible.

Support the show

Linear Music Theory Learning For Everyone!

SPEAKER_00:

Ladies and gentlemen, do you know what time it is? Yes! It is time

SPEAKER_02:

for Music Theory!

SPEAKER_01:

Let's hit it! Yes! Yes! Let's go! Let's learn! Let's have

SPEAKER_00:

fun! Let's beautify our lives! Let's make music better! Let's make

SPEAKER_01:

our lives

SPEAKER_03:

better!

SPEAKER_01:

Yes!

UNKNOWN:

Let us go!

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome back to The Harmonious Blacksmith, a music theory exploration. I am, of course, your humble host, Kevin Patrick Fleming. Oh my! Oh dear, there they are. Yeah, you all came back for more. I'm so happy you did. We're going to have a lot of fun today.

UNKNOWN:

Thank you. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00:

Today, this is episode 18 of my podcast, and this will be all about

SPEAKER_01:

bass.

SPEAKER_00:

Please take a moment to take a look in the description of this episode where it says support the show. Please click on that link and just check out the options. Look,$1,$3,$5 a month, whatever you're willing to give really does go a long way. It's money that you won't even notice is gone, but it can really help me continue to create great content for y'all. Thanks again for supporting the show. Let's go.

SPEAKER_01:

Bass lines

SPEAKER_00:

are such a cool part of music, which is why we're studying it today. I've had a lot of students over the years show a lot of curiosity about this. How do these bass lines come about? Why is that bass line so smooth when I hear it? In other words, what Where does the creativity come in and how can we tap into that? And if you are new, stumbling across this podcast for the first time, first of all, welcome. But I do feel the obligation to tell you this is a cumulative podcast, meaning episode one leads to episode two and episode one plus two are needed for episode three and so on. So if you're new, please do go back to the beginning and get caught up with us so you can understand For the first definition of the day, we will ask what is a bass line? A bass line is a melodic series of connected notes that come from the bottom range of the harmony within a chord progression or a piece of music. The notes can be root notes of the chord, as the bass often plays and functions that way, or it could be any note that works within the harmony or the chords. And that would be in the form of what we call chord inversions, if you remember that from past episodes. And look, we're going to get into examples of all of that very soon today. So we are going to put a lot of previous skills and definitions together in order to understand bass lines. Things like melody, harmony, chords, chord progressions, scales. All of these things are coming together. together to help you understand what a baseline is, how it's created, and how it functions. First thing we need to do is to distinguish between what the base range is and what a baseline is. So we already defined what a baseline is. So what is... Range in music. Range refers to a specific set of notes, either low, medium, or high, that an instrument or a voice can perform successfully. So if I play my regular old acoustic guitar, the range would be like this. The lowest note I can play is here, which is what we call the low E on a guitar. The highest note I can play sounds like this. It's so high, it almost sounds like I'm playing a piano. I swear it's a guitar. And that is a high C sharp. Therefore, the range of my guitar is that low E note you heard all the way up to that high C sharp. And there's a certain number of octaves that we attribute to that. But to truly understand range and baselines in music, it's necessary to go back and understand the evolution of Western harmony and where it comes from. So things I talked about all the way back in episode one are about Gregorian Chant And this is where everything evolved from. So if you recall, Gregorian chant started with one vocal line, just singing a melody. Then multiple other voices would join in in unison. Eventually, they realized that you could have another voice sing a static note while another voice moves above it, and harmony was born. Then, as you can imagine in the evolution, more and more parts kept getting added over the years and centuries until it blossomed into a full four-part harmony style that we call SATB or Soprano Alto Tenor Bass. SATB or Soprano Alto Tenor Bass represents a four-part harmony style in which the four different vocal ranges are represented and work together in order to create full and rich sounding compositions. Most of you probably have an eye what each parts are like. So for example, soprano is really the highest range of any composition. If it's vocal, it's generally sung by women. Then you have an alto part, which is lower women or higher sounding men. Tenor is generally speaking the higher range of the men that sing. And then bass, of course, is the lowest of the low and is generally all men singing at the lowest part of the range. Now, if we're talking about choir or chorale style music, that is the case. But that style has permeated and evolved all the way into all of our instrumental stuff too. And that's the reason that I'm explaining it. So SATB, four parts going from high to low. And as you can tell, bass is the part in the bottom. Now it's important to explain that because bass is not just a range. It doesn't just have to be super low notes. It can actually just be the bottom part of any composition. Let me give you an example. Let's say you have a quartet of piccolos, right? Piccolos are super high sounding flute style instruments. And let's say you have four of them. Well, guess what? There's going to be one on the bottom that's playing the lowest sounding note of that composition, even if they're all high. So in other words, even if you have four instruments or four voices that are singing really high, you can still have what we call a bass part at the bottom. So the bass part has a functionality generally speaking it is to carry the lowest notes of the chords or harmonies in the lowest part or lowest range of that particular music and it is relative to that particular music so listen to this beginning part of a famous song called blackbird by the beatles that sounds like this so So this song actually operates in three parts. I would kind of call it like a soprano tenor bass kind of thing, but it still has the same principle. You can tell there's a low range. And I'm emphasizing that with my thumb. So you're hearing a bass line that goes like this. And then you're hearing a tenor line that just goes like this. stays stagnant and doesn't move. Then you hear a soprano line that does this. And so there's your recognizable high line. And again, when you put them together, you get this. But if I go back and I take each one of those parts, so I'll start in the beginning where you heard this. And really those three notes form a chord together. It forms a G major chord, which is not a surprise because we're gonna get chord formations out of all these parts. And when I play that chord, this is the lowest note in the chord and becomes the bass note. Really at its core function, bass plays the lowest note of all the chords. That's a very general definition and it's not always the case because sometimes it's gonna play other notes and I can show that right now. When I play this G major chord, this is a root note. Now the next chord we go to sounds like this. And that's an A minor 7 chord, but it also has an A in the bass. But the next chord we get sounds like this. That is a G slash B chord or a first inversion G chord. So if you recall from inversions and our definition of them, basically an inversion in a chord is just flipping the chord so that the root note is no longer in the bass. Now you have one of the other notes in the chord in the bass other than the root note. That is what an inversion is. So when you hear G slash B or the first inversion, we have a B in the bass, yet it's a G chord. So this is where bass lines start to take off in creativity. The idea that if I play a G chord, I could use a G in the bass, I could use a B in the bass, or I could use a D in the bass. So I can literally have my bass line start on any of those three notes. So the bass note on the first chord is root. So it's a G chord with a G bass note. And then the second chord also has a root bass note. It's an A minor seven with an A in the bass. And now we go back to the original G chord, except we have a different bass note. And that's what makes it interesting, right? It gives it variety. So why didn't Paul McCartney go G, Why didn't he make the bass line just root notes? Because that's less charming and less connective, and also it has less of a rise in musical tension than when you go up like you're in a scale. So that's what he wrote, as opposed to... The choices he made in the actual track are much more smooth and connected than if we just played the root notes as you heard. It just sounds a little disjointed that way and it's not as charming and lovely and doesn't create as much of a linear sound. I will come back to Blackbird later so we can check out the next parts that have really cool bass lines but I do want to pull back and just simplify things a little bit. So what we're going to do We're going to take the prototypical 1-4-5 progression in a major key and we are going to figure out what our baseline possibilities could be. So now it's time to put some of that good old music theory knowledge to work. Some of the stuff we've been talking about and learning this entire time in my series. So we're going to back up and we're going to take a typical 1-4-5 5 progression and we're going to do it in the key of g the most common key in guitar playing and so first of all think about what that means first of all what is a 1 4 5 progression we should know that by now and in the key of g that would be g major c major would be 4 and d major would be 5 So I'm sure you all got that pretty quickly by now. But now remember, the other thing is to understand what pitches work in harmony against each one of those chords, right? Recall scale degrees. When we talk about scale degrees, remember, we're just talking about the number order that the pitches come in. So when I'm in G major, I'm starting on G as one, right? And then I'm going in order based on the original major scale formula. And I'm going... one two three four five six seven one so for example when you play a one chord recall that the triad has the one three and five notes in it So those triad notes, those notes that actually build that entire chord, end up being the note choices we have for bass lines. So, if I'm a guitar player playing a G chord, my bass player generally is going to start on a G. Let's say we're just playing a song for the first time, writing a song, maybe covering a song, that's the place to start. But it doesn't mean that I can't eventually get creative if I'm the bass player and play the three. Just like we were talking about earlier with Blackbird. And then there's also the five. So now, I did go over that earlier, but now let's go to the four chord, which is C. Now, what three pitches make up that triad? Do you recall? They are four, six, and one. So in this case, it's a C, E, and a G. That is four, six, and one on a C chord. And those become the triadic notes you can use on a C chord. So I can use that one and then play the chord or I can use the E and then play the chord or I can use the G and play the chord. I can even use a low G and play the chord. So it gives you a lot of different melodic possibilities and bassline possibilities as you can imagine. So finally we move to the V chord and that is a D major which is of course going to outline in the triad at scale degrees 5, 7, and 2. So those are the three pitches that you can use, once again, if you're a bass player.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, Kevin, you've really re-explained all this stuff really well, but what in the world am I supposed to do now? Well, now it's time for...

SPEAKER_01:

The Baseline Game.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right, it's time to play The Baseline Game. And it's really, really fun. Basically, it's a game of connecting chords within a chord progression using the different possibilities of bass notes that will work. So to begin, let's go ahead and just connect our I chord with our IV chord. So I chord G. And we're going to connect that to our four chord C. Now, can you think right off the bat how many possibilities we have of going from a G triad to a C triad? Hmm. Yes, this is a big part of the game. Let me give you an example of what I mean. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and set my first bass note as a root note scale degree one G. So when I play my one chord right now, my bass note is G. Now I'm going to move to a four chord, which is a C. And as you can imagine, the very first connective possibility is to go to the root note scale degree four, which is a C. So our very first bass line that connects chord one to chord four is going to be a G to a C. Now we sound like we're playing a bass line, right? Very simple, but effective. So that's your first possibility. So if I outline that a little bit using finger style, it could sound like this. So you can tell I'm playing the chord, but I'm emphasizing the bass note so you can hear it. Okay, so that's possibility number one. Now, what would possibility two be? So really we're going through what we call permutations in math. No, I'm not going to go into that, I promise. But that's essentially the term. That's what we're doing. So I'm going to start on G again. But this time, I'm gonna move to a different pitch within the four-chord triad. So recall, within the four-chord, we have four, six, and one. All right, so we already played four, so now I'm gonna go to six. So this time, I'm gonna go from a scale degree one, which is a G, on a G chord. Now when I move to a four-chord, my bass note is going to be an E instead of a C, which is scale degree six. It's gonna sound like this. So now my bass line sounds like this. Hmm, a good bit different, right? So let's compare the bass lines. Our first one was G to C, or one to four. Now our second one is going from one to six, or G to E. Now, that is a completely different sound, is it not? And yet, those pitches meld with the same exact chord progression. So again, if I go one to four, accenting the second bass line, it would sound like this. So vastly different. So as you can tell, we can keep going with this. So what's the next possibility? Again, we're gonna stay on scale degree one on chord one, but now exhausting our possibilities on four, because we have three notes in a triad, we already use scale degree four. We already use six. Now we're gonna use one again. So guess what? One, that sounds familiar. Isn't that the bass note I just played? So yes, it is a possibility that scale degree one could stay static and stay there as the chord moves and it'll still work like this. So I could just stay there and not move. And that actually works because that scale degree one is in both a one chord and a four chord. I could go to the octave if I want as well, because remember the octave and one, they're the same, even though they sound different. It's the same pitch. So I could go. That's another possibility. And that would sound like this.

UNKNOWN:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

So right away, I'm already coming up with some interesting possibilities for chords one and four only. So in conclusion, we came up with four different possibilities for a different bass line sound going from one to four. The first one was just root notes, one to four. The second one went from the root note of the first one to the middle note of the second one. So from a G to an E. The third one went to the octave, because we realized that G worked on both chords. And then lastly, you could just stay on the low G and not even move. And even though that seems like the least interesting, sometimes it's effective depending on the type of music you are making. So now we continue on in the bass line game. Now it's time to connect our four chord to our five chord so that we can connect all three chords using a bass line. So recall your four chords of C and our The V chord is going to be a D. So the triad for our IV chord is C, E, and G. Or scale degrees IV, VI, and I. And then our V chord, of course, is going to be D, F sharp, and A. Or V, VII, and II. All right, so let's start with the basics. On the IV chord, we're going to start with the root note C. and harmonize that with the chord. And then we're gonna move to the simple solution of going the root note to D. Now, remember, this is the basic function of a bass player to play a root note And so this is the most common bass line you'll hear. But we're going to get creative, of course. So that is scale degree four. Going to scale degree five. All right, let's go on to possibility number two. We're going to again start on scale degree four for the four chord. But this time I'm going to go to the next note in the triad of the five chord. Instead of scale degree five, I'm going to go to seven, which is an F sharp. This makes for a really interesting bass line right away. So listen to this. So that bass line is what we call the good old fashioned tritone.

UNKNOWN:

Tritone.

SPEAKER_00:

Quite dissonant sounding and awkward, right? You're like, that's my bass line? Yeah. It works really well, actually, for that chord progression. And it's actually interesting sounding rather than the typical stuff we're used to. So instead of going... Which, of course, works really well. Now we're going... against the same chord progression. So back to back, it would sound like this. Here's root notes. Now here's the second possibility from root note to the middle note of the second one. Very interesting right away. And to exhaust our possibilities, now we're gonna go to the last note of the five chord triad, which is scale degree two. So again, scale degree four on my C chord. But now I'm gonna play scale degree two for my five chord. And I decided to move down on this one just to show you another possibility. So now I'm going from scale degree four down to scale degree two so my bass line now sounds like this and we're getting a bit of what we call counterpoint i'm not going over that in this episode but i will very soon All right, so our three possibilities we came up with sound like this. This is number one. This is number two. And then this is number three. All three sound very different and can create different possibilities and interests based on the type of music that you play. All right, so we are just getting started with this bass line connection idea in this bass line game. And notice, I didn't even move the notes on the first chord out of the two chords we were working on. I always just stayed on the same note and then went to another one. So you can imagine that you can now change the notes on the first one too and come up with all kinds of possibilities we are going to do more of that in the next episode when i go over a little bit more complex bass lines and also the concept of voice leading and counterpoint all of that in the next episode do stay tuned but now it's time for break down Today we talked all about bass lines. We talked about the difference between a bass line and the bass range. That discussion led into SATB or four part harmony soprano alto tenor bass parts. We reviewed scale degrees, triads, and chords so we could understand how to connect these things. Then we had the joy of playing the bass line game where we learn how to connect chords in a chord progression using different bass notes. Coming up on episode 19... We will continue to explore baselines. We're going to get into what we call walking baselines. We are also going to get into a concept called voice leading. We're going to play more of the baseline game. It's going to be a lot of fun, so do tune in. So until the next episode, we can... Continue this music theory exploration with all of you. Thanks again for tuning in, y'all. Have a wonderful music-filled week.