Bass Educator Phil Mann Concludes “Chord Tone Concepts” Series with Volume 4 on Voice Leading and Triad Pairs
Bassist and educator Philip Mann has released the fourth volume in his Chord Tone Concepts series of instructional books, marking the culmination of eleven years of work. Volume Four: A Renaissance in Melodic Interpretation further explores everything you can get out of knowing your chord tones and utilizing them in new ways.
“The ‘chord tone concepts’ series is an academic study which focuses upon the application of voicing leading, via an in-depth investigation of ‘functional harmony,'” says Mann. “Addressing a multitude of harmonic properties involved in music performance (from the blues to more contemporary chord progressions), the pathway transcends through a multitude of various components, all of which lead to the development of the same practical skill set: voice leading.”
In that capacity, Mann builds upon books one, two, and three with his latest offering. Volume Four takes a look at applying triadic ideas in modal harmony. By using triad pairs, you can break down complex chord structures into a more digestible form. Berklee College Bass Department Head Steve Bailey, who wrote the foreword for the bass, helps to explain its usefulness.
“In plain English; as functioning bassists you’ll spend most of your musical lives playing either ostinato motifs, or generating voice leading walking basslines,” he writes. “When the appropriate occasion arises where a fill can be generated, it’s highly likely that the time frame in which you have to deliver any artistic expression will be minimal – so concentrating your efforts on a fail-safe system to assist the delivery of essential melodic information will be, to say the least, time well spent. Instead of procrastinating over which scales correlate with which chords, simply identify the pending chord type, then deliver the most appropriate arpeggio supplemented by nothing more than a complementary triad pair”.
Chord Tone Concepts Volume 4 is 116 pages long and includes musical notation with tab. It is available now, along with the rest of the series, on Phil Mann’s With Bass In Mind website.
In his time with No Treble, Kevin has met hundreds of amazing bassists and interviewed icons like Jack Casady, Victor Wooten, Les Claypool, Marcus Miller, and more. He's a gigging bassist performing jazz in Northern Virginia and bluegrass with The Plate Scrapers up and down the East Coast. Kevin appreciates all genres of music, from R&B to metal and everything in between. Connect with Kevin on Facebook and check his performance schedule on his website.
