Hi. I'm Gareth Green, and in this video we're going to be thinking
about improving a bassline. Quite often people manage
to write a piece of music and they just say, "Well I'm
reasonably pleased with it "but it's a little bit lifeless "and I don't really want
to have the melody going "kind of crazy with
notes in all directions." Well, one thing you could
think about doing is sprucing up the bassline to see if
there's something you can do with the bassline that's going
to energise the music a bit without having to change the
melody and kind of take away from the essential mood and
character of the melody. Now what do I mean by all this? Well, we're going to take a few bars of a fairly famous piece of music. So, this is a little
patriotic moment from us Brits because I'm going to
take the first six bars or the first six measures
of the national anthem. And this is how it goes,
"God Save the King". That's something that gets sung in the UK over and over again. When you think about it, I
mean it's all right, isn't it? But you've got this melody
that everybody knows in the UK and probably in many other
parts of the world as well, but it's very kind of ploddy, isn't it? Kind of chord chord
chord chord chord chord. So if you wanted to liven this up a bit, well what could you do to it? Now my point is, without
having to wreck the melody you could work on the bassline a bit. And what you can really
do is simply think about inessential notes or
non-chord tones as a way of getting a bit of rhythmic
energy into the bass. Let's see if we can work through this and examine what I'm thinking about. Well, there's a little bit
of a gift in the first bar, the first measure of this. You might have noticed the
bass part starts on this G, goes down a third to E,
goes down a third to C. So G, E, C. Now, whenever you've got a bassline or any other part for that matter, but in this case we're
thinking about the bassline, if you've got a line like
that that's moving in thirds, you can always think about the possibility of sticking in a passing note. Okay, let's just be sure
we know what this is. So let me give you an example. So if I do this and insert an F-sharp into the bassline there, I'm
kind of connecting the first G with the E that comes on the next chord. This is a passing note or a passing tone because it's passing by step. So we're coming from G by step to F-sharp and we're moving on from
that F-sharp by step to E. In this case, the G
belongs to the first chord. The E belongs to the second chord. So this F-sharp is a passing
note that just runs between. Now of course I can do the same
thing again on the next note because the bassline
is moving from E to C. So all I need to do is to go E, D, C and have the D as a passing
note or a passing tone. So the first bar, the first
measure started life like this. Now it's going to do this. And then you think, "Oh,
actually that's brought it "to life a bit, hasn't it?" So there we go. Now, when you come to the
end of this first measure, this first bar, you're now going to say, "Oh well I can't really put a passing note "between C and D because C
and D are next to each other." Well, you could do this, you
could put a C-sharp in there because that would be a
chromatic passing note to go C, C-sharp, D. So that's a little bit cheeky, isn't it? But you could do that. The only trouble is you've got
C-natural in the tenor part. So whether you'd really
want to have C-natural and C-sharp sounding at the same time is a little bit debatable, isn't it? But you might be able to
change the tenor note. I mean, you could change
the tenor note to an A and then have a C-sharp going up to D. That's one way of doing it. Absolutely. One other thing you can do
so you're not just living on a diet of passing
notes or passing tones, is just think, actually I could just hop to another chord tone,
another harmony note, another note that belongs to the chord. This is at this point an A
minor chord in first inversion because the third of the
chord's in the bass, the C. So it's A, C, E but C's in the bass, that's why it's in first inversion. An A minor chord. Well, why don't I just
hop the bass down to an A? So I'm creating movement, I'm
putting another eighth note in or another quaver, but I'm just hopping to another note that belongs to the chord. That works all right, doesn't it? Hmm. Okay, let's move on to the
next bar, the next measure. Now we've got a slightly
interesting situation here because the rhythm is slightly different. We've got a dotted quarter
note or a dotted crotchet before we move on the next
quaver or the next eighth note. So how are we going to kind of, if we're going to get these quavers moving that we've managed in the
first bar, the first measure, these eighth notes, how
do we keep that going? Well, how about this for an idea that in fact, what we do is
we kind of ignore this dot for a moment and we use
a lower auxiliary note and then come back to that D and then we can kind of join up this as a group of four quavers. Okay, well that kind of works. That C just sounds a little bit strange so I'm going to suggest
we call it C-sharp. Uh-huh. Does that sound any better? Oh, it does, actually doesn't it? So sometimes you can do something like that just to kind of
improve the sound of it. Now what have I done with this
by using this C-sharp here because that's not a passing note, is it? It's what we call a lower auxiliary note or a lower neighbour tone. And because I've, well let's
just be sure about that, because I've gone D, I've gone down a note and I've come back to D. That's a lower auxiliary note
or a lower neighbour tone. If I'd gone D, E, D, the E would've been an upper auxiliary note or
an upper neighbour tone. Because I'm going C-sharp
rather than C-natural that's what we call a chromatic
lower auxiliary note, okay? A chromatic lower neighbour tone. Chromatic, not because it's
going in semitones or anything but because it's using a note that doesn't belong to the key. We can get into, well
why am I using a C-sharp? And why does C-sharp sound
better than C-natural? There are reasons for that. We've got a chord of D major going on. So even though the chord
of D major is chord V, the dominant chord in G major, so you would imagine that
C-natural would work better. It's also chord I, the
tonic chord in D major. So the C-sharp sort of helps
to suggest a hint of D major. We're not really changing key,
we're not really modulating to it, but it sort of
enhances a feeling of D major. The other thing is if we
do C-natural in the bass, that would've just
materially changed the chord because we've now added a seventh. If I take chord V, D, F-sharp, A and I put the seventh
on it, that's C-natural. Well that's what we'd be doing. I'm putting the seventh in the bass. Now as soon as you write
a V7 chord, a D seven, a V7 in its last inversion,
whatever you do with a V7, there are voice leading implications. In other words, certain notes
pull in certain directions. So if I have this V7 chord,
the third always goes up or wants to go up by step the seventh always wants to go down. That's the main problem. If it did this, it would be fine because that
voice leading would work well with the C-natural. So one reason I'm using C-sharp
is because I'm coming back up again and not really allowing
that C-natural to go down. Because it wouldn't fit if I went down, we've got the wrong chord there. So the C-sharp helps to kind of get over that little problem. So these are the sort of things you have to think about sometimes. But, you see what I'm
actually doing here though is elaborating this
bassline using a mixture of essential notes, chord tones, by just jumping from one note of a chord to another note of a
chord like we did there. And sometimes I'm using
these passing notes or passing tones. Sometimes I'm using an auxiliary
note or a neighbour tone. So, different ways in which you can kind of make the bass work. Let's move on. We're coming into a role of
keeping these eighth notes or quavers going, which is great. Maybe on there. Well how do I go from F-sharp to G? There's no note between F-sharp and G so I can't use a passing
note or a passing tone. So maybe I can do another
one of these things where I'm just sort of jumping
to another harmony note, another chord tone. So how about I just come down to D there and then we can kind of just
use another note of the chord. That works, all right. Doesn't it? Marvellous. Now then go on to
the next bar, the next measure we've got the gift that we had in the first bar again, don't we? The first measure, where we
can use some passing notes or some passing tones. So let's play that trick again. So you see what I'm doing? I'm just joining up these notes. So now instead of going, I'm doing. So that's quite handy, isn't it? Great. When I come to
the end of the third bar, the third measure, well
what's the bassline doing now? We're going from C to D. So C, D, can I use a passing
note or a passing tone? Well I could go see C,
C-sharp, D, which we talked about back here, didn't we?
It's the same kind of thing. But we've got the same problem. If I go C, C-sharp there,
I've got C in the melody. That's a bit yuck, isn't it? It's what we call a false relation. Nothing to do with relatives
that you don't get on with. But a false relation is
when I've got one note in one part and the same
note in another part but we've changed the
accidental so we can get that kind of nasty little clash. So that's not going to
work too well, is it? So we can't really do that. Can we jump to another chord tone? Another harmony note, we could do, but here's another little trick. How about doing this.
If we jump down to an A before we move on, what
have I done to that? Well the thing is, this
chord here is a C major chord or a chord IV in the key of G. But by jumping down to A, I've actually turned the
chord into a II7 chord, an A minor seven chord. Right, what's going on here? Well here's chord IV, the
C-major chord, C, E, G. If I put A on the bottom of
it, you can see I've still got these three notes of chord IV. But by putting an extra
third on the bottom of it, I've now got an A minor chord with a seventh on the top of it. So what was chord IV
now becomes chord II7. Quite a useful little
harmonic trick actually to say here's a basic chord. We often think about putting a third on the top of the chord. So we take chord IV, put
another third on the top so it becomes a IV7. But what about taking
chord IV, putting a third on the bottom of it, so it becomes II7. It's quite a nice way
of warming up a chord. So in this case. You see it kind of works
quite nicely, doesn't it? Ooo, right. Okay. Now when we come to the
next bar, the next measure, this kind of rhythm is
the same rhythm as that. And there are certain things
in common, aren't there? But now we've got this
kind of dotted rhythm again and we're just going from D to D-sharp. So how are we going to
kind of make this work? Okay, here's an idea for this. If we just sort of shoot that little dot and we do what we did
before in the second bar, by having that little C-sharp back to D. And this time instead of moving on to E it moves on to D-sharp quite happily. So we can have a little
group of four quavers there. So this time I've got. Now could I have used C-natural? I could have done, actually,
it would've been a bit kind of easier on the ear than the last thing in the second measure,
when we were talking about, well if we use C-natural
it makes a bit of a muck of the chord V becoming a chord V7. We haven't got the same problem here. If I go for a C-natural back to D, actually that's okay. But the C-sharp is nice and chromatic and the main reason I've done it is to keep going chromatically
D, C-sharp, D, D-sharp, E. So it's all going by semitones. It's kind of just creeping
around chromatically in semitones, which I
think is quite a fun thing to do actually, but
that's probably just me. Anyway, that was fine. Now when we come to the end of this bar, well look we've got one of
these again, haven't we? Where the bass is going
down a third, so guess what? It's passing note time. So there we go. Passing tone or a passing note just slips in there rather nicely
and we're in business. Lovely. So that bar now goes. And technically of course,
I should just indicate that that is a natural because
we had a D-sharp earlier in the bar. Okay, moving on to the next bar. Well again, we've got an
issue that we met before because if this is going by step, well can I use a passing note? The only one I could do is
a chromatic passing note going C, C-sharp, D. But again, if I use that
C-sharp, I've got C-natural then I'll have C-sharp down here. We're back with the old false relations. They keep turning up, don't they? Especially at Christmas time. Anyway, let's see if we can
do something with the bassline possibly doing something
that we've done before. Instead of trying to find
something like a passing note, we just jump to another chord
tone, another harmony note. Ah. That works quite nicely, doesn't it? And then when we go on the next thing, I've got a repetition of a bass note. Now whenever you get
a repetition of a note that's a little bit of a gift if you are looking for an
auxiliary note or a neighbour tone because if I've got D, D, I can go D, E, D or D, C, D or I could do
something chromatic D, C-sharp, D. So you could sort of find one
of those things, couldn't you? Well okay. Let's do that. But let's do a chromatic
lower auxiliary just to make it a bit more
exciting and that fits in with things we've done before as well. So you start to find a kind of consistency of approach that enhances
how it all hangs together. So that's handy in this
part that I can do this. And now what am I going to do at the end? Because I don't really want to go ♪ da da dee dee dee ♪ or something, I could do,
put four sixteenth notes, four semiquavers and run down the scale. But I've been running in quavers and eighth notes all the way. Well, why don't we just do this. If I just leap an octave, so I'm going to the same
note an octave lower, then I'm going to get. Okay, now let's do the before and after. So this is what we started with. This is without all these
extra red notes in the bass, all these inessential notes
and sometimes harmony notes, chord tones that we've put in. But just the plain original
black text goes like this. Now let's put in the red notes as well and we can see how this just
brings the bassline to life. Do you see how that really
kind of energises it? So the melody is just
settled as it was before. We're not trying to do
anything mad with the melody but the bassline is
waking things up a bit. Now you could combine
that with some movement in the alto and the tenor parts as well. But even just doing the
bass kind of does the job for you very nicely, doesn't it? And if you are in a position
such as I'm often in where you have to play the
national anthem for example or any other song and you're
kind of trying to accompany it and inspire the singers to
give it a little bit of oomph, well that kind of movement in
the bass can really add to it. And here's another very practical thought if you're playing it. If you can play the bass in octaves, it kind of really makes
it feel much more solid. It's a bit like having it
played by the orchestra and putting the double bass on the bottom of it to add extra weight to the bottom. Or having the tuba in a
brass band or something. So playing the left hand in octaves. See how that really does kind
of make a full bodied sound out of it? And just by breathing that
life into the bassline we really elevate the impact
of a piece of music like that. Well, if you've found this video helpful, you might want to go to our
website, www.mmcourses.co.uk. When you get there, click
on courses on the homepage and you'll see a vast array of courses that we've put together
just to help people develop their musicianship in all sorts of ways. So whether it's getting
your theory and knowledge sorted out, your aural
development really going, doing some analysis, doing some harmony, there are whole loads of things on there. And if you click on there
you'll suddenly discover there are all sorts of things you've possibly been looking for for years. This is what people keep telling us. And we've done some A to Z courses that will really empower
you as a musician, whether you're a performer or a composer or wherever you are coming from. When you're back on the homepage, you'll also see another little link to Maestros and that's our
international musical community. And if you go on there, you'll
discover there are all sorts of perks involved in being a member of Music Matters Maestros. There are three levels,
nothing to do with ability. It's all about level of engagement. So level one comes with some perks. It's a very kind of cheap membership cost but you just kind of
engage with us a bit more and enjoy those perks. If you want to go a step
further, you can join level two. You get all the level one
perks, plus a load of new ones including access to a monthly live stream. This is where I teach for an hour and we do all sorts of topics
like the one in this video but lots of other things as well. And there's a live chat running so people can ask their
questions, make comments, just really engage with the whole thing and feel that they're kind of connected with other people from different parts of the world engaged in a
very similar musical journey. And lots of people find
that amazingly supportive. If you want to take the ultimate plunge you can join up as a level three member. If you do that, you have all the level two and level one benefits as well. But in level three you have access to an additional livestream every month. And in that you can submit
your own compositions, your own recorded performances,
any of your own work and I'll give you personal
feedback on that work. We share it with the
group so everybody gets to hear what you're doing,
see the scores, and so on. As I say, I give you feedback, other people will make
supportive comments. It's very, very positive,
supportive stuff. And we all learn from each other which is amazingly useful way to go about developing musically. Well, it's all there on the website. So do have a look when you get a moment and see what you can find
that's going to be useful to empower you on the next step of your exciting musical journey. www.mmcourses.co.uk.
