Chords For Bass [11 ESSENTIAL Shapes]

[Music] foreign [Music] [Music] here I hope you're doing really well today in this space lesson I'm going to show you how to make really cool music on the bass using chords chord progressions and a little bit of Melody there aren't that many songs that actually purely use chords on base here's one I can think of actually [Music] that's one but other than that you know as you very much know bass players usually just play root notes and chord turns things like that but you can get a Looper pedal you can play a chord progression and you can practice on top of that you can compose you can improvise you can jam you unlock the neck a little bit by playing colds all over it you understand Harmony there's a ton of stuff that's useful and that's what we're going to do in this lesson all the examples in this lesson are going to be in the key of G major I'm going to start on the E string playing the G Major scale across and playing the chords from there and I'm going to explain a few things as we go first of all what this is this is a fretboard diagram and the orientation of your base is is like this so the lines going down this way are your strings from left to right eadg and the horizontal lines are your Frets The Blob is where you put your fingers and the number in it is the finger number to use and then finally underneath you have the interval that it makes up which is a good thing to note so let me show you this so this is the first one we've got a g on the third fret yeah pay attention to where the Fret numbers are as well and those are the numbers on the left we've got a g on the third fret of the E string we've got a D on the fifth fret of the a string and it's saying fingers one three and then finger two on the fourth fret the B on the G string now straight up you will notice that that's a bit taxing on the hand so at any point if you're practicing this if you feel any strains especially down the wrist here or in the joints here it's a good thing to maybe stop for that day if you've never played chords before on the bass this kind of thing will be quite difficult but just ease yourself into it give yourself time to learn it a bit of a stretch there's an interesting technique going on with the plucking hand as well let me show you let's get a good angle on there so I've got my G chord here and it's got a root of five and a tenth that's the third up the octave quite a simple voicing a voicing is what notes you put into a chord more of that later and I'm using my thumb for the E string index for the a string and middle for the G string and you can create rhythms doing that let's just start simple foreign [Music] this is called a free stroke a rest stroke is what you're used to when you play bass you pluck and you come to rest on a string that's called a rest stroke this is classical guitar really and a free stroke is just where you pluck whether it's with the fleshy part of the thumb foreign all the other fingers and you just kind of come away from the base not you don't want to slap sound nice gentle so if you're going one two three four you can practice quarter notes [Music] eighths and those are sixteenths so that's a tiny bit about the technique and about the fretboard diagrams let's go through all the chords of G major every single shape in this lesson is available on a free pdf with no sign up or anything like that just follow the link below and you can get it so we've got G A minor I'll just stop to explain this line that's called the bar guitarists do this a lot it's where you use one finger to play more than one note on the same fret so the first fingertip is playing the A on the fifth fret of the E string and I'm just backing that finger so this part here where that creases down here is pressing down on the C on the fifth fret of the G string that's called the bar and that way you can just use one finger to play notes like that and then I've got that note there so that's an A minor chord B minus same chord one fret highest C major exactly the same shape as this first one as is the D same shape E minor another E minor so straight away the one the four and the five chords were major the two the three and the six here are minor we've only had two shapes so far that's an odd one that's a third shape that's a diminished chord the fifth here is flattened and that's why you've got that so you can use your second finger for that and again I'm barring here if you find another way to do this that makes more sense to you then do it then we've got the G again very simple voicings the root the five and the third up the octave so let's make a chord progression from that so I'm going to choose E minor D to C foreign [Music] that's the speed I'm choosing you can do anything you like those are eighth notes I'm going E minor D push to c d c like that you can separate the notes out I should have mentioned that that's by going thumb index middle index left foreign you can do two together or you can do all together you can do anything here a bit more of them now imagine getting a looping pedal I don't have one set up unfortunately so I can't demonstrate it but you would punch that in and then [Music] do a little solo over the top that's a great thing to practice we're in e minor or G major so that's how that would work if you want to give that a go just a quick word this is really good for composing it's good for creativity improvising understanding Harmony but yes we don't really play stuff like that in songs but don't forget that if you play that like a traditional bass player would separate the notes out [Music] starts to sound a bit more like a bass line so all those notes are our chord tones are arpeggios play together that's what a chord is okay so just separate the notes in any of these shapes and you've got the components of a good bass line as well okay I'm going to do exactly the same thing now except I'm going to use a different voicing remember voicing is the notes that you choose to place into the chord so route 510 which was what we did previously that's quite basic I like that's good for pop it's good for Rock let's do a little bit more of a jazzy bluesy feel perhaps and that's just seventh chord so here I'm doing a root a seventh and then that same tenth and I'll play them all the way through actually that seventh one I didn't put the fifth in this would be it [Music] what we notice here is that the one and the four are the same I'm creating chord progressions right now even by demonstrating this the two the three and the six are all minor seventh the five is the only one that's got this dominant seventh shape which has a very strong pull you may have heard of a two five one if you did that it's a jazz chord progression more of that later and then there's this funny called the the seven chord is that minus seven flat five sounds real mouthful that's a minor seven flat five but it does describe exactly what is in the chord [Music] so you can make up chord progressions using that in the intro I did it's going between the five that dominant seventh D7 to the E minor seven I've played that chord progression for years I'm always drawn to that I love the sound of it [Music] I'll just introduce what I did there you can add Melody to the chords there's something guitarists do a lot since we're in the key of G major which has a relative minor of E minor it doesn't matter how you think of it E minor G major the same [Music] all you need to do is know the notes and you can play them over it and they'll all sound good minor pentatonic as well sounds good E minor pentatonic [Music] so you can start to hear the basis of songs that you can create and also songs that are out there so this will help your ear with chord progressions too as well as being fun to play so far we've had two sets of shapes on the E string now I'm going to do the set of shapes rooted on the a string so this time the voicing goes root major third and then the seventh I'll play through them now foreign G Major seven that's what I did there and now I can go to one of those chords that we just played on the E string the four chord in G major if you don't understand what I'm saying with two five one and all that just learn a scale G Major scale and number the notes one to eight the eight is the octave you just find four it's C and that's a Major Seventh chord so that's what I did there [Music] did you hear that that was just a G Major scale I have to adapt the technique a little bit if I want to play in this style using a bit more of the thumb perhaps hammer on there [Music] so what you can start to do now is play chords that are on the a string and the E string so let's make them another one there's that five chord I liked before on the E string the D7 it's alter the Rhythm a bit to keep the notes separated there I'm just lifting up you can also get that Bossa Nova thing a bit like the Mario Kart theme tune that's on the a string I'm just going G Major seven and you just go that gets your five so that's just another fun thing you can do so I just quickly want to talk about voicings let's go to that G Major seven that's rooted on the tenth fret of the a string I've got a root major third Major Seventh let's swap that major third out for a fifth very subtle difference but it is a bit different there's a different voicing root five six you can do a sus2 chord by doing root five nine [Music] that's just uh G Major seven and because it's a major chord major pentatonic works over that then I went to the C Major seven did the same thing [Music] [Applause] minor with minor pentatonic that's another cool thing you can do if you want to know anything about the minor pentatonic check this video out so you can see how you can really go down the rabbit hole with this there's so many things that you can do in terms of changing this style changing the sound of your bass altering the chord progressions I want to just show you a couple of things to practice to finish this video number one is just to learn all the shapes in sequence you know [Music] and just understand that in a major key you've got major minor minor major major minor that diminished one and then you've got the major again learn them in sequence whether you're on the E string doing root 5 10 or doing the seventh chords on the E or the a string still the same here look major set major seven two minor sevens a major seven again then it's five so dominant seventh minor seven I've got to come back here for that funny half diminished chord okay you do learn these things just by drilling it in all the time and you just realize okay major minor Miner and you'll understand that the more you do it that's the first thing second thing make chord progressions up [Music] like that I'm starting on E minor now E minor d c and just maybe get a Looper pedal record it or just simply play it with a metronome or a drum Loop let's listen to it with a drum Loop [Music] you probably won't play that on a bass line but you could write a song doing this you could tell your guitarist I want you to play a bit like this I think it makes you a bit more skilled to be able to play these chords then finally you can play a song that you know that uses chords so if it's some sort of pop song then you can just use the really simple chord Shades but look what's a tricky song or tune Giant Steps let's go through very quickly to finish this lesson I'm going to play Slowly because it's 286 beats per minute normally I'm going to very slowly go through the chords of giant steps I might adapt it a bit actually I might I might do half the speed we'll see um and I'm just going to go through those chords see what it sounds like oh or you can double the length of the chords make it your own and do something like this [Music] [Music] all I'm doing here is using the shapes that I've taught you and you just need to learn it well enough that you know the notes I'm reading the chart here just reading it off and to do this you need to know the shape and the note the root note that you need on whatever string so you need to know your notes okay that's an excellent exercise for learning the notes on your fretboard in conjunction with these shapes don't forget when you play them separated you're playing what you would in a bass line you know you could [Music] very easily flesh out the third and the fifth in there as well to make this entire lesson like a bit more of a traditional Baseline lesson anyway that's enough for now I think if you like this lesson and you've got a bit of time perhaps watch this lesson on harmonizing a scale which is a little bit more Baseline focused rather than chord focused if you have any questions at all let me know otherwise thanks very much for watching and I'll see you on the next video

Channel: Dan Hawkins Bass Lessons

Views: 85,653

Keywords: bass guitar, bass lesson, bass guitar lesson, bass player, learn bass, learn bass guitar, bass guitar lessons, bass guitar lessons for beginners, bass guitar for beginners, how to play bass guitar, bass guitar songs, easy bass guitar, how to use theory, how to play a bass riff, bass songs, bass music, bassline, bass guitar cover, bass guitar solo, bass guitar technique, bass groove, bass tutorial, funk bass, bass, bass chords, bass chords lesson, chords, music theory

Id: 7PlATGvBsQo

Length: 17min 35sec (1055 seconds)

Published: Sat May 27 2023